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by Candice Carty-Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2019

A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment.

The life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old Jamaican Brit who is not having a very good year.

" 'My last girlfriend was black.' I looked at my date and blinked, sure I'd misheard him. 'Sorry?' I asked, leaning across the table." But indeed, that's what he said. Just as she heard correctly when "Balding Alpha," a guy she dates later in her annus horribilus, licks her shoulder and comments, "Tastes like chocolate." Queenie's attempts to get over Tom, the long-term white boyfriend who dumps her at the beginning of Carty-Williams' debut novel, send her stumbling through a mined landscape of interracial dating and friendship, including the occasional white stranger who reaches to fondle her hair as if in a petting zoo. Terrified by the continual news of violence from the United States, Queenie is trying to get the paper she works for in London to cover important issues—"I’d wanted this job so that I could be a force for change"—but her editor responds to her pitches by suggesting a piece on "ten of the best black dresses Me Too movement supporters have worn at awards ceremonies." After all, it's the holiday season, and what people are really thinking about is party dresses! Queenie's main supporters are the three girlfriends who make up a texting group called The Corgis (a reference to the queen's loyal pack of pooches), but one of these relationships is about to detonate due to our heroine's wildly indiscriminate sexual choices, choices that keep her running in and out of the health clinic on a biweekly basis. At least she'll always be able to fall back on the judgmental embrace and reliable hot water of her ultratraditional Jamaican grandparents. Why she ever fell for that drip Tom and why she still loves him so much are never at all clear, but perhaps that's how these things go.

Pub Date: March 19, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-9601-0

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018

LITERARY FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Candice Carty-Williams

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SEEN & HEARD

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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by Donna Tartt

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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by Mark Z. Danielewski

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Book Reviews

Queenie's second life on screen gives her more room to grow.

Carole V. Bell

In the episode "From Virgin to Vixen,” Queenie is in peak fun mode, until her demons begin to catch up with her. Latoya Okuneye/Lionsgate hide caption

The new Hulu series Queenie explores the quarter-life growing pains of lonely South Londoner Queenie Jenkins.

The first of her British Jamaican family to go to university, Queenie is a struggling writer awkwardly straddling multiple worlds. An unwanted breakup with her white, longtime live-in boyfriend Tom sends her painfully reeling — spiraling into, and then climbing out of, destructive behaviors and onto a journey of growth and self-acceptance.

The show, which premiered Friday, is based on a 2019 book by Candice Carty-Williams. And with Carty-Williams at the creative helm, the novel’s strengths are immediately visible on screen: the sharp social observation, the rawness of the voice, and the specificity and conundrums of aspirational, young Black British life in the millennium.

As showrunner, Carty-Williams effectively translates and expands her vision, addressing the pain points that both riveted and rankled the book’s readers and ensuring that the creative aspects of production also make an impression. Through sight, sound and performance, Queenie creates an empathetic and irresistible portrait of a young woman’s life in multicultural-yet-divided London.

The performances bring the novel to life

As great as the production sounds and looks, it’s the performances that make Queenie’s journey really accessible on screen. The material is challenging and multi-tonal but not a performance hits a wrong note. British actor Dionne Brown embodies Queenie Jenkins inside and out in a breakout role that is a world away from her restrained supporting performance as a police detective in the Apple TV+ crime drama Criminal Record . Brown told NPR she felt drawn to the role because of how strongly she related to the novel: “my most visceral and initial reaction was just, I didn't know that other women felt like this. I didn't know other Black women felt like this.” So throughout taping she used the book “like a Bible.”

And though it’s her first screen acting role, hip-hop artist Bellah is bubbly and fierce as Queenie’s bestie Kyazike. As her loving and protective Jamaican grandparents, Joseph Marcell (butler Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air ) and actress and comedian Llewella Gideon steal every scene they’re in. Pivotally, BAFTA-nominated actor Samuel Adewunmi, so powerful in the crime drama You Don’t Know Me , radiates charisma and kindness as Kyazike’s cousin Frank.

The format allows the audience to go deep

The eight-episode series format allows viewers to go deep into Queenie’s world, getting to know friends and family and helping us understand how love surrounds Queenie without her really feeling it. Where the novel can seem a bit bleak in spite of the humor, episodic TV gives Carty-Williams more room to experiment with different moods and tones. A few days before the premiere, Carty-Williams told NPR that she knew “we would need a lot more light on the screen” in the TV adaptation.

Candice Carty-Williams' Q ueenie stars Dionne Brown and Bellah. Ramona Rosales/Disney hide caption

Carty-Williams also said she felt fiercely protective bringing her first published novel to the screen. Basing Queenie’s story on her own experience coupled with second hand-horror stories from friends, “I had all those feelings and I didn't want them to be stripped away, or watered down. The politics were important to me, the characters are important to me.” Queenie is a young woman’s story, but it’s also the manifestation of the adage that the personal is political. Queenie’s experiences lay bare the contours and consequences of England’s casual racism in every dimension of daily life. That includes, “the ways that [Queenie] was treated by people. This is at work, this is in relationships, this is in her relationship with Tom.” Carty-Williams said she was “willing to fight” to ensure that Queenie’s mental and emotional journey of finding herself in this world she saw as unfair made it to the screen intact.

Despite the production’s extensive management structure (Lions Gate, Disney's Onyx Collective, and British Channel 4 were involved and over a dozen executives), it’s clear she succeeded. The show teems with the sometimes-painful, subtly-political observational humor and confessional motif that made the book stand out – and all the elements work well together.

Some important changes from novel to screen

Still, though faithful to the novel’s quarter-life crisis story, with the book's most memorable thoughts and lines of dialogue making the leap almost verbatim from page to screen, the script bears some important changes. For one, Queenie’s circle includes a romantic addition – best friend Kiyazike’s cousin Frank, a friend and new love interest who appeared once briefly in the novel. Frank’s addition improves the series by addressing one of the biggest issues dogging the novel’s more ambivalent readers: Queenie’s fear and avoidance of Black men in favor of often painful encounters with white and brown men.

Queenie’s original release reflected both the pervasiveness and abuse of “rom-com” and “chick-lit” as book industry terms of art, and the delicate tightrope that Black writers walk telling stories about love, sex and race.

When Queenie debuted it appeared on best seller lists in multiple countries. Queenie won both Best Debut and Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. Carty-Williams was the first Black woman author to win the latter award.

In Britain, where Carty-Williams grew up, Queenie quickly found a fiercely loyal following — a largely female audience that loved its voice and perspective. Many of those readers were women of color, Black British women who identified fiercely with the young woman struggling to claim love, career, self worth and mental health.

But the book's popular and critical reception was somewhat mixed in the U.S., where the author was an unknown quantity. At minimum, some audiences were discomfited by Queenie’s emotional scarring and trauma around race when they believed they were promised something lighter – the heft and trauma of the book billed as a Black Bridget Jones Diary seemed to betray its framing . While Bridget Jones’ deepest insecurities stemmed from 10 extra pounds, granny panties and two very different suitors, Queenie grapples with racism, a miscarriage and sexual trauma. And some vocal African American readers were unhappy with its handling of these heavier themes. At worst, some storylines were seen as painfully self-hating or even the product of internalized anti-Black racism.

Falling into ever more painful situations, Queenie has sex with men who talk about and treat her in demeaning, if not downright racist ways — the men she meets in apps and in the neighborhood reference her race, color, and the contours of her body as though she is a sex toy. They don’t see or aren’t that interested in her intelligence and her pain.

Gallery/Scout Press hide caption

Carty-William’s unflinching portrayal of Queenie’s situation is one of the novel’s most challenging aspects. Though Queenie notices and complains about the degrading approaches, she dates a series of these men and continues to long for the return of a boyfriend who seems to treat her with little regard. She seems to internalize racism and brush off the disrespect, taking it in stride as long as the men dishing it out are not Black. Even for a literary novel (which despite the comedic tone, Queenie really is) that would be hard to take in ( Luster comes to mind). But that’s not how the book was positioned. Though Carty-Williams used the “Black Bridget Jones” marketing pitch to broaden the readership, she’s also said of Queenie: “She’s not Bridget Jones. She could never be.” As a result of the label, though, and the gorgeous, brightly-colored cover drawing of a Black woman with braids and hoop earrings, Black women were primed to see themselves at the center of romance-infused comedy. That’s not what they got.

Instead, the novel Queenie offers a sometimes harrowing multidimensional portrait of the dynamics of love, work and identity, mental health, and the Black immigrant experience. The love and acceptance Queenie eventually finds is hard won, and it lies not in a romantic relationship but within herself and her community. That’s a healthy choice. But every genre makes a promise, and a bait and switch in terms of reader expectations can feel like erasure.

Exploring critically important topics in the book and on screen

That said, as Carty-Williams emphasizes, discomfiting or not, Queenie’s experience is worth delving into. If it’s hard to reconcile Queenie’s sharp insight and her self-destructive actions, it’s also true that Queenie navigates a world that routinely doesn’t see, or fetishizes and even villainizes, her. Exploding the stereotype of a "strong Black woman," with intense vulnerability, parts are hard to watch, but through her experimentation and misadventures, both the novel and the series explore essential topics: the racial and gender dynamics and politics of consent and desirability, and the rippling effects of domestic partner abuse. It is hard to watch her covet white attention and approval even when it hurts her, but it’s something that many Black women have been through.

Dionne Brown as Queenie in a scene with her best friend Kyazike, played by Bellah. Latoya Okuneye//Disney hide caption

A big challenge for the screen adaptation is that despite therapy, Queenie’s deeply rooted fear of Black men doesn’t have a resolution, or much deeper exploration in the original text. In a novel about self reflection, self-acceptance and growth, this is hard to reconcile. The series does better. The racial dimensions of Queenie’s pain and fears were at the center of some online discourse in 2019 and, in the leadup to the premiere, some with knowledge of the story raised similar questions on social media in reaction to the Queenie trailer.

When talking with NPR for this piece, Carty-Williams pointed out that when readers have been in conversation about her debut, they tend to ask how Queenie did what she did. She pushes back wondering why the onus is on the woman rather than asking why men behave how they do toward Queenie. She also disclosed that the series allowed her to better resolve Queenie’s difficulties with men in her community partly, but not exclusively, through her relationship with her best friend’s cousin Frank. Carty-Williams said that this exploration was inspired both by conversations with readers and by her own maturation. Now in her 30s, she says she better understands attachment disorder, and how fears and triggers manifest, than when she started writing the novel at 26. In this way, the story of the making of Queenie -the-series has a happier ending — giving Queenie more room to grow.

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A corner of my life...

in Book Reviews · February 17, 2024

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams | Review

Hi readers, I’m back again with another book review. I stumbled upon Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams back in 2020. Despite my efforts to steer clear of reviews, the buzz surrounding it was impossible to ignore. The draw? A protagonist who’s a bit of a hot mess—my kind of character.

Funny story: I got my copy for $4 at Value Village. And get this, while I was deep into the story, I found a random receipt tucked inside. It was a receipt for rent somewhere in Mississauga. The thought of tracking down the previous owner crossed my mind, but I quickly dismissed it as potentially creepy and thought it was best to let the mystery of the receipt remain unsolved. Another thing I noticed was how cheap rent used to be.

Now, let’s talk about “Queenie.” She’s a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman trying to make sense of life in London. Freshly single but hanging onto hope for a reunion with her ex, she’s on a rollercoaster of emotions, bombarding him with messages despite his obvious need for space. And guess what? she starts unravelling. She’s trying to navigate life’s twists and turns while struggling with her mental health. Oh, and fair warning: the guys in this book are absolutely terrible. ALL of them. Seriously, I lost count of how many times I muttered “Why are men???” while reading.

But here’s the kicker—the author nails Queenie’s character. I felt for her, got mad at her, and sometimes just wanted to shake some sense into her. It’s a real emotional rollercoaster. And the deeper you dive into her story, the more you understand why she’s the way she is.

Queenie felt like a little sister to me. While I was disappointed by her actions, I also recognized that the most profound growth often arises from life’s experiences. Candice Carty-Williams’ engaging writing style, coupled with the incorporation of texts, added a delightful layer to the narrative.

The author did a wonderful job with crafting such an engaging story. She also tackled heavy themes like anxiety, panic attacks, being a black woman at a work place, relationship, sex, family.

I highly recommend this book. I’m grateful I read it now instead of four years ago because I might have been more judgmental of Queenie back then.

Exciting news! “Queenie” is hitting our screens as a TV series, set to premiere in June 2024! I’m thrilled, especially since Candice Carty-Williams, the author produced the Netflix series “Champion” that I absolutely loved. For those curious about the cast, Channel 4 has all the juicy details in this article here .

If you enjoyed reading this book review, you can read my other reviews here . Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one if you’ve read it.

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Book Summary and Reviews of Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

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by Candice Carty-Williams

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About this book

Book summary.

Bridget Jones's Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?" - all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. With "fresh and honest" (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today's world.

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Reader reviews.

BookBrowse Review "Candice Carty-Williams' first novel, Queenie , has a lot going for it. Her characters are excellent; each feels unique and fully fleshed-out - real-life people with genuine relationships between them. The dialog in particular is stellar, and the author's use of text bubbles and e-mail communication between the characters was perfect. Also, as advertised, it's very funny at times, with the author's outstanding use of dialog playing a key role in conveying the humor. The novel has its flaws, though - too many for me to feel like I can recommend it. Oddly, the number one reason I didn't think the book was great was the fact that the publisher's blurb about it compared it to Americanah , and as such I couldn't help but compare the two as I read, with Queenie falling flat. Americanah was a revelation to me; it helped awaken me to my own subtle prejudices and, I'd like to hope, make me a better person. Queenie , on the other hand, simply made me think, "Well, these people are awful" and move on; the author's stroke was way too broad. In addition, the protagonist was a mess, seeking validation from truly horrible men and putting herself in dangerous circumstances (e.g., inviting a guy she met at a party back to her flat for consensual sex that turned so rough the doctor at her next exam thought she was being abused). Frankly it got old having her lurch from one escapade to another; her behavior started out very bad and just stayed at that level, never really getting worse, with the narrative having her plateau right at the start and just stay there throughout the majority of the book, not reaching the turning point until about 75% of the way through. It may have been a more interesting book had her decline been more gradual. The author attempted to make the story more relevant by including a bit about the Black Lives Matter movement, but this felt like an afterthought and the subject wasn't fully explored. Toward the end of the book the protagonist did seem to be turning her life around, but it happened way too late; I'd lost interest long before then." - Kim Kovacs Other Reviews "Starred Review. A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment." - Kirkus "Starred Review. This is an essential depiction of life as a black woman in the modern world, told in a way that makes Queenie dynamic and memorable." - Publishers Weekly "Starred Review. Fast moving and with a strong sense of Queenie's London, this entertains while tackling topics like mental health and stigma, racism and tokenism, gentrification, and the isolation of social-media and dating-app culture. This smart, funny, and tender debut embraces a modern woman's messiness." - Booklist "Meet Queenie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman who works for a London newspaper, is struggling to fit in, is dealing with a breakup, and is making all kinds of questionable decisions. In other words, she's highly relatable. A must read for '19." - Woman's Day "Brilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking." - Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You "My favourite novel this year. Queenie is the sort of novel you just can't stop talking about and want everyone you know to read. Snort your tea out funny one moment and utterly heart breaking the next, (and with the best cast of characters you'll read all year), I absolutely loved it. I can't wait to read whatever Candice writes next. If there is anything right in the world, Candice Carty-Williams is going to be a literary superstar." - AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs. Bird "This book isn't even out yet and people are talking about it. Written by a new and exciting young woman, it's articulate, brave and, in the new parlance, 'woke.' Funny, wise, and of the moment, this book and this writer are the ones to watch." - Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon "Candice gives so generously with her joy, pain and humour that we cannot help but become fully immersed in the life of Queenie - a beautiful and compelling book." - Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)

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Author Information

Candice carty-williams.

Candice Carty-Williams is a Senior Marketing Executive at Vintage. In 2016, she created and launched the Guardian and 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, which aims to find, champion, and celebrate Black, Asian, and minority ethnic writers. She contributes regularly to Refinery29 and i-D, and her pieces have been shared globally, especially those about blackness and sexuality. Queenie is her first novel.

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Book Review: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Title : Queenie

Author: Candice Carty-Williams

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Orion Publishing Publication date: March 19 2019 Hardcover: 330 pages

Bridget Jones’s Diary  meets  Americanah  in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did I get this book: Bought

Format (e- or p-) : Audiobook (and it is AWESOME)

I am not really sure how to even begin to address (or unpeel, or unveil) all the different layers in Queenie, this astonishingly good debut by Candice Carty-Williams. I know how not to though: I’ve seen Queenie called “breezy and amusing” and was so taken aback because calling this deeply moving, harrowing, hurricane of a novel “breezy and amusing” is the understatement of the decade .         

25-year-old Queenie is a British-Jamaican woman living in London, going through the trials and tribulations of a young journalist/writer trying to get a decent place to live when her long-term relationship with beloved boyfriend Tom breaks apart (sorry, ahem, they are just on a break ) and then making bad decision after bad decision when navigating the dating scene. She also spends time with her group of best friends with whom she exchanges life advice. If you are thinking of Bridget Jones’s Diary , you are not too off the mark, the marketing material itself makes that connection for us readers with the novel going as far as having a character named Darcy – but here, Darcy is Queenie’s best girl friend (someone who supports her, just as she is ).

I have a lot of good memories about reading Bridget Jones’s Diary in my early twenties, finding in it an energizing novel that not only showed but allowed a woman to be a low-self-esteem hot mess and still get a happy ending with the guy she wanted and deserved. I was young, free, and also a white cis het woman and my preoccupations, unlike like my privileges, were not many.

But then we have Queenie the book and Queenie the character, with an updated take on life-in-London-as-a-woman and building on it by making it not only deeper but also intersectional, contextual and truly focusing on Queenie’s journey of self-awareness and self-esteem in a way that I found not only touching but also so very empowering and inspiring. In a way, now that I think of it, perhaps a closer match would be between this novel and Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, also about the same topic and combining comedy with pain in a similarly heady, devastating way.  

But truly, Queenie is entirely its own thing.

And itstarts with a break.

Ostensibly, the break is Queenie’s three year long relationship with the man she loves coming apart. He tells her she never truly shares herself or her “things” with him and in her mind, going through moments spent together, she believes she is the one at fault for things going pear-shaped. Also in her mind: it is only a matter of time before they are together again, if only she does everything right and gives Tom the space he asked for. She is miserable, lonely and decides to start dating again. Queenie then proceeds to have a number of truly terrible, harrowing, self-destructive sexual encounters that are hard to read because they are so heart-breaking. Queenie is used and abused, barely enjoying any of these encounters, allowing herself to go through this because she deeply believes she doesn’t deserve any better. Things go from bad to worse in a desperately short period of time when her job, her reputation, her friends, her house, her own mental wellness all fall apart.

There is another type of break here,  a foundational break on which Queenie’s life was built: the breaking of her family life with an absent father and a mother who left Queenie to fend for herself when she was really young so her mother could be with an abusive partner. This particular story goes much deeper than this bare summary and Queenie’s “things” have a real foothold on years and years of difficulties and abuse.    

Queenie’s life is also not lived in a vacuum: she is a black woman in Britain now, the subject of racism enduring both macro and micro-aggressions on a daily basis. She is also the granddaughter of Jamaican immigrants, one in the line of women expected to behave a certain way both from external sources and from within their own community. When Queenie tries to ask for help from her family, she is met with a huge amount of love and care but both are given under very strict, historical limitations. Plus, women like her should not, ought not to show their sorrow or express their problems in mental health definitions regardless of the fact that Queenie is having multiple panic attacks.  

Queenie’s break away from all of this is manifold and above all, it is not done without a huge amount of support: from her closest friends who are all there for her. From her younger, teenager cousin, someone experiencing the same family life but from a modern frame of mind, someone who shares and understands Queenie in ways many of her friends can’t. There is also the unexpected support from her grandfather in a scene that made me sob, as well as the expected support from a therapist.

For Queenie, crossing that clearly delimited yet invisible line (“Our people just don’t do therapy”) is The Moment where she choses herself . I have never read a novel in which the mere fact of the character choosing to see a therapist was both the most rewarding and the most fraught decision ever made. Precisely because there is nothing “mere” about it. But it marks the beginning of Queenie’s journey into healing, coping, finding her voice and falling in love with herself.  

Rating: 10 – Perfection

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Ana Grilo is a Brazilian who moved to the UK because of the weather. No, seriously. She works with translations in RL and hopes one day The Book Smugglers will be her day job. When she’s not here at The Book Smugglers, she is hogging our Twitter feed.

Thank you for reviewing this. It has been on my radar but I’m going to put it on my library request list.

I have been thinking of putting this book on my TBR list for the new year. I was on the fence because I am often weary of books that are described as a new version of a classic, such as Bridget Jones. Yet, this review spins a new perspective for me, thanks.

text twist 2

Also in her mind: it is only a matter of time before they are together again, if only she does everything right and gives Tom the space he asked for. ..

When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name.

Queenie was a really interesting and thought-provoking book. It delved into the mental mechanics behind the lack of self-love. I appreciated the rawness surrounding Queenie’s path of self-destruction in her sexcapades. Her reasoning as to why she was self-destructing was explained and the therapeutic reason was revealed in an exciting and excruciating way.

Angel Belcher

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams is among the books shortlisted for an honor for female parody composing.

The book is shortlisted in the distributed comic books classification of The Comedy Women In Print Prize.

I have been considering putting this book on my TBR list for the new year. I was wavering since I am frequently fatigued of books that are depicted as another adaptation of a work of art

Sleeper Recliner

I was wonder to read about this book here. I have read it and was impressed. Thank you for this review.

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Queenie is a smart, vibrant story of modern black womanhood: EW review

A young woman living the dream in London publishing, looking for love and success in the big city but somehow always sliding toward the wrong man, the botched assignment, the last unnecessary cocktail. It’s not hard to understand why Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie has already earned breathless comparisons to Bridget Jones’s Diary : Both books feature endearingly messy heroines who careen from one bad decision to another and confide in the reader with the familiarity of a best friend — just swap journal entries for WhatsApp group chats.

But while it can’t hurt, of course, to be associated with one of the most beloved literary creations of the past quarter century, the similarities largely end there; Queenie Jenkins is coupled (at least as the story begins), Anglo-Jamaican, and distinctly millennial in her outlook. And she’s less concerned with counting cheese-based calories and units of alcohol than with surviving as a 25-year-old black woman in a world that seems determined to discount, define, or deliberately misunderstand her at every turn.

The first page opens with a pelvic exam, and only gets more intimate from there. As Queenie, a low-level arts writer newly separated from her long-term boyfriend, tries to navigate life as a single woman, she realizes that her ability to cope with men and work and mental health is not nearly as strong as the image she projects. And that the issues of her past — abandonment, instability, physical abuse — are coming up hard against her increasingly unstable present.

Plotwise, Carty-Williams tends toward certain tropes: missed cues, unlikely coincidences. But her unvarnished takes on depression, gentrification, cultural taboos, and casual racism — from the cringey sexual-chocolate puns of OkCupid prospects to the colleague who briskly dismisses “all that Black Lives Matters nonsense” in a meeting — cut to the bone. And her debut reads a lot like its smart, sensitive protagonist: full of flaws and contradictions, and urgently, refreshingly real. B+

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Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams review – timely and important

I t would make sense to describe Queenie , the debut novel by Candice Carty-Williams , as an important political tome of black womanhood and black British life, a rare perspective from the margins. It is both those things, but primarily it is a highly entertaining, often very moving story about one young woman’s life as affected – in fact, almost destroyed – by her love life, with the politics of blackness permeating the pages. It is rare. It’s still so rare that even its most simple, nondescript moments are something to celebrate. Queenie, for example, taking off her coat and putting it through the strap of her rucksack in a London street while flat-hunting. Her Jamaican grandmother calling: “I’m putting the hot water on. Come down for your porridge and wait for it to warm.” How often do we get to read of black people in novels making porridge for each other and negotiating their rucksack straps? It’s a thing of joy to witness the everyday within a familiar yet still relatively hidden context, particularly when that context has often been shackled to hefty racial themes, its mundane humanity hardly given space to breathe.

South London millennial and budding journalist Queenie is, as she herself admits, a “catastrophist”: someone who worries about worst-case scenarios, unbearable outcomes, general humiliations and the perpetual lead weight of anxiety. The novel opens with a gynaecological examination introducing three causes for worry: the possible loss of her coil, an undetected pregnancy and a preceding sexual episode bordering on abuse. So begins a difficult and painful journey through Queenie’s unfortunate choice of men. There is the Pakistani Muslim BMW driver who addresses her as “big batty” and wants to experience the “forbidden fruit” of sex with a black woman. There’s the sex addict she meets at a party who gives her internal bruising; the neo-Nazi encountered on a dating site, also interested in exotic black-girl sex; and the relatively normal nice white boyfriend, who becomes an ex-boyfriend, which is what leads to the flat-hunting, during which she is groped by a Polish estate agent. “Is this what growing into an adult woman is,” Queenie asks, “having to predict and accordingly arrange for the avoidance of sexual harassment?”

Predictably enough, the novel has been hailed as the black Bridget Jones , and it does bear loose similarities in its portrayal of the conventional female quest for the love of a good man and the realisation that self-acceptance and self-sufficiency are more important. But Carty-Williams goes much deeper than that, casting a full glare on the damaging reductive stereotypes, born of slavery and colonialism, that surround black women’s bodies, sexuality and psychology. The gynaecological beginning seems to make a point in itself, and likewise the sexual frankness throughout is refreshing, smartly and accurately rendered by a voice fully in command of its own narrative and intent on setting the record straight.

During her schooldays, Queenie was accused of being “white on the inside and black on the outside like a coconut”; her friend Kyazike assured her that she can “be any type of black girl” she wants to be. Ripped to shreds is the enduring stereotype of the “strong black woman”: this heroine flails and weeps in a whirl of panic attacks, sleep paralysis and depression, for which her therapist prescribes various cognitive behavioural exercises. There is a touching theme of women supporting each other, and the camaraderie and empathy Queenie gets from her WhatsApp group of friends “The Corgis” are especially affecting. Their text-speak is hilarious, peppered with “KMTs” (kiss my teeth, Jamaican slang), while sometimes the group’s varied backgrounds necessitate translations from white-posh to multicultural London English. Kyazike herself is one of the most alive characters I have come across in any novel; she must be read to be believed.

Amid this centralising of female experience and friendship there is a sustained awareness of surrounding social and political issues, such as race hatred and gentrification. What happened to that old Caribbean bakery there used to be in Brixton? And how is it that Queenie feels so conspicuously out of place at her local pool, the Brockwell Lido, where she overhears two middle-class white women complaining about the tenants in their second homes? The Black Lives Matter movement crops up several times, and we are called on to mourn the black men dying in droves at the hands of US police brutality. This is an important, timely and disarming novel, thirst-quenching and long overdue: one that will be treasured by “any type of black girl” and hordes of other readers besides.

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Book review – “Queenie” by Candice Carty-Williams

Most of my reviews recently seem to have been of quite high-brow books. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m any kind of snob when it comes to reading it’s just that it has all been quite literary of late. I’m currently reading Claudia Winkelman’s Quite in the crevices of my life (when the complex plotting of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starts to make my head hurt!), my book club’s choice  and which one of my friends described as ‘hubba bubba’! If you are old enough to remember what that is, well, it is describes the book perfectly! Look out for my review of that soon.

A novel I read recently, which was at the more popular end of the spectrum (no judgement intended), was Queenie , the debut novel by Candice Carty-Williams. It was shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the Waterstones Book of the Year and the Costa First Novel Award, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize last year and won in two categories of the British Book Awards in 2020 – Book of the Year and Debut Book of the Year. So, it was quite a sensation, and its thirty-two year old author seemed to be everywhere!

Rightly so, because it is a super book, very readable. In my head I thought it was a YA novel, the cover and the marketing scream YA, but it’s really quite adult; I’m not sure I’d be giving it to my 16 year-old for another year or so, for example. Lots of quite graphic sex.

Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-something Londoner of Jamaican origin and the novel begins with her break-up from long-term (white, middle-class) boyfriend Tom. He initially tells her it is a “break” but it becomes quite clear that he is simply trying to let her down gently. Or failing to be honest with her, depending on your perspective.

Queenie’s life soon spirals out of control. She has to move out of the apartment she shared with Tom into a much more shabby and smaller room in a house. She also finds herself engaging in a series of brief and bruising sexual encounters. Some are literally bruising – one affair with a junior doctor leaves her with a physical damage and a STD. Almost worse, however, is the work colleague who seems nice, approaches her with sensitivity and understanding, but, guess what? He just wants the sex and turns out to have…other commitments!

This is more than just a break-up novel, however. The book has been described by some as the ‘black Bridget Jones ’, but it is far more complex than that. Queenie experiences gaslighting of the nastiest kind, and you can’t help but notice the racial dimension to that. But it’s not exactly a ‘race’ novel either…it is more complex than that too! It is a novel about sisterhood because it is friendship that gives Queenie the leg-up she needs to get her life back on track, her relationships with ‘The Corgis’ – the title of the Whatsapp group she invites her three closest confidantes to join. 

This book is a good read. I don’t want to say ‘fun’ (like Bridget Jones) because it is at times deeply harrowing, although the author has a deft comic touch that quickly lifts you out of the gloom. It’s snappily written, with a style that a younger readership will recognise and engage with, but which is not too beyond the comprehension of this middle-aged reader either!

So, proof – I’m not just into classics and high-brow!

Recommended.

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4 thoughts on “Book review – “Queenie” by Candice Carty-Williams”

Agree, I loved this book but didn’t get the whole Bridget Jones Comparison

It’s strange isn’t it. I loved Bridget Jones when it first came out, but it’s a totally different novel. Much darker and more complex.

Same I love Bridget and completely it agree Queenie goes to some really dark places

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Table of Contents

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• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

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About The Author

Candice Carty-Williams is a writer, now a showrunner, and the author of the Sunday Times (London) bestselling Queenie , which was shortlisted by Goodreads for book of the year in 2019 and won the British Books Awards Book of the Year in 2020. In 2016, Candice created and launched the Guardian 4th Estate Short Story Prize, the first inclusive initiative of its kind in book publishing. Candice has written for The Guardian , i-D , Vogue , and pretty much every publication you can think of. She will probably always live in South London. Follow her on Instagram @CandiceC_W.

Product Details

• Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press (May 14, 2024)
• Length: 352 pages
• ISBN13: 9781668056134

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Raves and Reviews

“Brilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” –Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

"Candice Carty-Williams delivers a hilarious roller coaster of a story." –US Weekly

"[A] brazenly hilarious, tell-it-like-it-is first novel." – O, The Oprah Magazine

"Vibrant, confused and honest, Queenie is a relatable heroine for modern times." –USA Today

"You'll likely feel seen while reading this (yes, it's that relatable), an example of what happens when you go looking for love and find something else instead." –PopSugar

"Candice Carty-Williams, a young Londoner, has a flair for story-telling that appears effortlessly authentic. Her title character is a woman you both know and cannot forget... Carty-Williams has taken a black woman’s story and made it a story of the age." – TIME Magazine

“The vibrant Queenie is a modern-day Bridget Jones's Diary , and so much more... [Carty-Williams’] debut reads a lot like its smart, sensitive protagonist: full of flaws and contradictions, and urgently, refreshingly real.” – Entertainment Weekly

"[A] hilarious, heart-shattering, deeply lovable novel... Debut author Candice Carty-Williams has created a truly one-of-a-kind heroine in Queenie, whose story is universally relatable without ever flinching in the face of challenging subjects that are more important now than ever. All hail Queenie ." –Newsday

"You’ll read Queenie , a novel about a young Jamaican British woman trying to find her place in London, in one day. It’s that good." – Hello Giggles

"Meet Queenie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman who works for a London newspaper, is struggling to fit in, is dealing with a breakup, and is making all kinds of questionable decisions. In other words, she's highly relatable. A must read for '19." – Woman's Day

“My favorite novel this year. Queenie is the sort of novel you just can’t stop talking about and want everyone you know to read. Snort your tea out funny one moment and utterly heart breaking the next, (and with the best cast of characters you’ll read all year), I absolutely loved it. I can’t wait to read whatever Candice writes next. If there is anything right in the world, Candice Carty-Williams is going to be a literary superstar.” –AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs. Bird

"Queenie is the best mate we all want—funny, sharp, and more than a little vulnerable. I loved climbing inside her mind and wish I could have stayed longer. I adored this novel." –Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars

"Hilarious and off the wall and tender." –Nikesh Shukla, author of The One Who Wrote Destiny

“I ate up Queenie in one greedy, joyous gulp. What a treat of a book. Lots to enjoy and think about. I loved Queenie and was cheering her on all the way. I thought all the mental health stuff was brilliant and so well done and authentic—it so often isn’t, in novels—and also all the unhappy sex rang so true. Is there a sequel planned? All I wanted to do when I finished was to open book two.” – Cathy Rentzenbrink, bestselling author of The Last Act of Love

" Queenie has all the things you want in a debut novel—a startlingly fresh voice, characters you fall in love with from the very first page, and a joyous turn of phrase that makes this book almost impossible to put down. In turns hilariously funny and quietly devastating, Queenie is an important, timely story." –Louise O'Neill, bestselling author of Asking for It

"A really special book with much to say about black female identity, sexual politics, group chats, emotional becoming in a way that feels totally unforced. Filthy, funny, and profound." – Sharlene Teo, award-winning author of Ponti

“This book isn't even out yet and people are talking about it. Written by a new and exciting young woman, it's articulate, brave and, in the new parlance, 'woke.' Funny, wise, and of the moment, this book and this writer are the ones to watch.” –Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon

“Candice gives so generously with her joy, pain and humour that we cannot help but become fully immersed in the life of Queenie—a beautiful and compelling book.” –Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)

"So raw and well-written and painfully relatable. It's also clever and funny and has the most glorious cover." –Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10

"The protagonist of this debut novel has been dubbed the 'black Bridget Jones' and comes from England buoyed by praise from Jojo Moyes. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican-British woman, a newspaper reporter in London, forced to re-evaluate her life choices after a bad breakup with her white boyfriend. A trio of girlfriends offers support via text messages; we can’t wait to meet them all." – Newsday

“Adorable, funny, heartbreaking. People are going to love it.” –Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

"An irresistible portrait of a young Jamaican-British woman living in London that grows deeper as it goes." —Entertainment Weekly (ew.com)

"Sometimes achingly sad, at other times laugh-out-loud funny, Queenie is a welcome debut from a seriously talented author." – The New York Post

"Carty-Williams creates an utterly knowable character in Queenie, who's as dimensional and relatable as they come as she tries to balance her own desires with what everyone else seems to want for her... This smart, funny, and tender debut embraces a modern woman's messiness." – Booklist, starred review

“With resonant reflections on race, relationships, sex and friendships, Queenie is a terrific debut that’s delivered with a touch of British humor and plenty of feel-good moments.” –Bookpage, starred review

“[A] smart, fearless debut… This is an essential depiction of life as a black woman in the modern world, told in a way that makes Queenie dynamic and memorable.” – Publishers Weekly , starred review

"A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment." – Kirkus Reviews , starred review

"A charming read for fans of women's fiction; Carty-Williams sets herself apart with her relatable and poignant writing." – Library Journal

"What Carty-Williams also adeptly deals with is the role of technology in our modern lives. Which sounds so serious, but the way she weaves in text messages, e-mails, and more makes Queenie’s world feel so real. Basically, the second the book opened with Queenie in stirrups at her gynecologist’s office, I knew I was sold. Kirkus calls Queenie , “A black Bridget Jones, perfectly of the moment,” and I am deeply inclined to agree." – Hey Alma

"Carty-Williams adds her voice to a timely conversation about mental health, sex and womanhood." – Time.com

" Queenie is the book for anyone who has ever asked: who am I? And how do I get there?" – PopSugar

"Already referred to as the black Bridget Jones, Queenie is the literary heroine readers seek in 2019." – AM New York

" They say Queenie is Black Bridget Jones meets Americanah . But she stands in her own right—nothing can and will compare. I can't articulate how completely and utterly blown away I am." –Black Girls Book Club

"In this Bridget Jones-esque story, a Jamaican British woman working at a London newspaper seeks comfort in the wrong places after a messy breakup from her white boyfriend." – PureWow

"This bloody brilliant novel is heralded as ' Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah ,' and you’ll be sold from page one." –Hello Giggles

"[A] wry, candid novel... Reading about 25-year-old Queenie as she navigates romantic entanglements, a frustrating job at a local newspaper, the ongoing tension among her and her white, middle-class peers, and pressure from her Jamaican British family, feels like listening to a good friend's woes and wins — and cheering her on along the way." – BuzzFeed

"The story of how 25-year-old Queenie Jenkins balances her Jamaican and British heritages while navigating professional inequalities and romantic dilemmas is Black and brilliant all on its own." –Essence

" Queenie is, quite simply, the best novel I’ve read this year so far... Queenie is an incredibly well-written, compelling novel about life in a modern London for young black women." – All About Romance

"I'm reading Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. It's very funny... I'm loving it." –Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six

"Queenie goes on heartbreaking, hopeful, sometimes funny, and always relatable journey." – REFINERY 29

"We are all Queenie in that we are all just trying to get through it. At the end of this book, Queenie feels like a good friend." – Shondaland.com

"In what is perhaps the funniest novel on this list, a 25-year-old Jamaican-British journalist finds herself single again after her longterm relationship with her white boyfriend goes in the bin." — Bustle

"A refreshing perspective." — Marie Claire

"Candice Carty-William represents Black Girl Magic to the fullest... QUEENIE named after the name character follows a young black woman post-break-up on a journey full of pain, honesty, and undeniable wit." – BET

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Slanted Spines

Queenie: A Book Review

Each month of 2020 has a specific Slanted Spines Book pick, and the July novel is Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams! My book review is an in-depth discussion about the book, but I include some spoiler warnings in case anyone hasn’t read it yet!

Queenie is a novel written in first person about Queenie Jenkins, a twenty-five-year-old woman living in London and working a job at a newspaper. It begins with a “break” in her relationship, which is initiated by her boyfriend Tom, who asks her to move out of their apartment. Thus begins somewhat of a downward spiral for Queenie, as she struggles to understand herself and where she belongs. Although proud of her Jamaican-British ancestry, she is often mistreated by co-workers and harassed by men because of her outward appearance, causing her to question if she can even be loved for who she is. In this incredibly engaging, entertaining, and deeply emotional book, Queenie embarks on a journey of self-empowerment.

Author Candice Carty-Williams is herself a resident of south London and writes as a journalist and contributor to a variety of magazines, such as Refinery29 . Queenie is her first novel.

The Writing

When I began reading Queenie , I was immediately sucked into her story, and I finished this book in just a few lengthy sittings—I needed to find out what would happen next in Queenie’s life.

The writing is pretty good and certainly relatable, and Queenie’s experiences are told in a really real and honest way. That being said, for me, it did sort of read like a debut novel. Occasionally I felt that the characters’ surroundings faded away while they were talking, and the story was quite heavy with the internal monologue. There weren’t really any moments when the prose stood out to me, however I will say that I don’t think that that was the intent of this book at all. Carry-Williams’ writing is really accessible and I think its merit partially lies in that it’s a straightforward telling of some real shit .

What I didn’t realize I would love about this book was the text conversations. I kind of wish every writer formatted their characters’ text conversations in actual speech bubbles, because it made the reading experience so much more “real.” How a person texts reveals information about their character—for example, Kyazike sends multiple, short messages, seemingly instantly, while Cassandra is less responsive and always includes a period at the end of her paragraphs. From this, Kyazike is characterized to seem like she’s on her phone more often, whereas Cassandra seems more assertive regarding the tone of her texts. It was actually refreshing that Carty-Williams didn’t try to include the texts within the prose, writing out all the “she texted back moments later” and “My thumbs tapped my response”s.

At this point in our lives, texting is so automatic, so ingrained in our daily experiences, that I also think perhaps seeing the texts within the book satisfies some part of our brain, as a reader. I don’t know any real science about this, but I bet at least a little bit of dopamine is produced when our conditioned brain reads “text messages” within a good old-fashioned book, or at least it satisfies some technology-hungry part of our attention that allows us to better retain interest in the book.

The Characters

Why I prefer reading female-authored books is that they’re far more likely to offer a wide variety of female characters, which Queenie certainly does. Aside from Queenie, there are at least ten established female characters, a majority of whom played essential roles in the story. On the flip side, however, most of the male characters who appeared throughout the book were notably horrible human beings.

Overall, I felt that the female characters were entertaining and vibrant, while the male characters drove me crazy. Some of my favorite characters were Queenie’s friends Kyazike and Darcy, and her cousin Diana. But if you are a person generally frustrated with men (as I imagine many of my female peers are), this book will fuel your distaste.

Most of the male characters that appear in this book are inconsiderate, crass, at least a little racist, and predominantly sex-driven. Unfortunately, I know that there are many men like this in real life, and I cannot imagine the sort of disrespect that Black women endure from the worst of them. (This is an awesome opportunity to talk about the long history of the mistreatment of Black women! *Trigger warning* Black women have been fetishized for centuries, and in the U.S. white slave owners would often rape Black women, and have historically been the subject of rampant, horribly brutal abuse! Black women are far more likely to be abused in their lifetime yet far less likely to report it for a myriad of reasons! We must do better to respect and legitimately uplift—and not over-sexualize—Black women!! They have been inventors, scholars, entrepreneurs, artists, and more, yet history has a tendency to erase them and minimize them into stereotypes!!)

Even though the men in this book are quite irritating and problematic, Queenie never really calls them out about it, and so their actions and words mostly speak for themselves. (I wrote “men are trash” in the margins of my copy seven different times throughout the book, and these were just the parts that upset me the most—never mind all the casual interactions in which male characters reveal their lack of integrity!) And although the male characters are the worst part of this book, they are also a large part of the problems, so they receive a lot of attention throughout the novel.

Anyway, Queenie is a very complex protagonist and there is a lot to discuss about her. These next few paragraphs may contain *SPOILERS* about her character development!

In this book, Queenie goes through it . Her main issues are boy problems: her boyfriend Tom initiated a “break” in their relationship, and Queenie spirals into an alarming cycle of sleeping with men who are blatantly scum bags. However, Queenie’s deeply-ingrained trauma plays a major factor in this; throughout her life, she has been taught that she is inherently worthless, and has value only when she acts a sexual object and feels she has never been unconditionally loved for who she is. As a Jamaican-British woman, she is a minority among her society and is often judged, mistreated, and disrespected because of others’ racial bias. To cope with her deep-set emotional pain, she finds solace in self-punishment, and seemingly becomes addicted to the abuse she endures. Repeatedly sleeping with a violent, impersonal men, skipping meals, self-sabotaging by slacking off at work because her thoughts are so distracted—Queenie finds herself in a really low place and struggles to find her own sense of security.

Moreover, at the beginning of the novel (and as a side note, I appreciate the bold opening scene, which takes place in a gynecologist’s exam room) immediately, Queenie discovers some troubling information, which is that despite that she has an IUD, she had conceived a child, but had a miscarriage—which would have been her and Tom’s baby. This discovery weighs heavily on her, and despite the multiple times she wants to tell Tom, ultimately she bears this burden herself, adding even more to her baggage.

There were many times when, as a reader, I was cringing at what Queenie experiences. Growing up with phrases like “This girl won’t amount to nuttin’ at all” and “Yuh ruin everything” constantly hurled at her by her mother’s abusive boyfriend, she develops a self-hatred which leads to codependency issues (pages 232;233). Queenie feels like she needs Tom in order for her to be okay, because being with Tom (at any cost)—to her—means that she’s loved . He’s her first real boyfriend, and she writes, “I hadn’t known what such closeness was like, to be able to share everything with one person, to have someone love you unconditionally, and to love them, despite each other’s -isms” (page 148).

But when she loses Tom, her sense of self-validation isn’t strong enough to endure; she fears that she may never be loved again. And so she allows men to use and abuse her, which is the predominant relationship dynamic she’s had with men, save for Tom. Because she feels as though she is fundamentally unlovable, she’s willing to settle for any scrap of attention to distract her from her persistent self-hatred. “Why didn’t I matter to any of the men who had run out of my life the first chance they could get?” Queenie wonders (page 138). There are times when, after having sex with her particularly abusive lover Guy, all she wants to do is cuddle, but is denied even that base physical intimacy, which understandably makes her feel even more lonely and self-loathing.

Although Queenie is sleeping around with men, she does not feel particularly happy about any of these activities (although she pretends to, when texting her friends). At the same time she craves male attention, she also uses these sexual encounters as a way to punish herself. When she hooks up with Guy, he’s so rough with her body that the health clinic believes Queenie is an assault survivor, and yet Queenie continues to subject herself to sexual appointments with him. During intercourse, she reflects, “I was in pain, but still I didn’t cry out, didn’t ask him to stop. I didn’t want him to. This is what you get when you push love away. This is what you’re left with ” (page 101). She internalizes her break-up with Tom, assuming full responsibility for their failed relationship, as though there is something inherently wrong—inherently broken—with her. Sadly, this is her default experience with male relations, and so she is trained to repeat the cycle that her own mother set as an example, especially when she’s at such an emotionally vulnerable low.

Even when it’s not male attention she seeks, it’s the attention of her friends. At work, Queenie is constantly interrupting Darcy’s productivity to talk about her own problems, which Darcy is goodnatured about but is clearly bothered by. Queenie even creates a chat message for The Corgis so that she can consult the female friend group for life advice. When life goes slightly astray, she immediately confers with The Corgis, further exhibiting codependent behavior.

Fortunately, this is not Queenie’s fate forever. After hitting a rock bottom, losing her job, and moving back in with her strict grandparents, Queenie finally accepts a helping hand and attends therapy (with only minor friction from her grandmother), beginning her journey towards healing old wounds and developing more productive coping mechanisms. (In her family, mental health is rarely discussed, and so growing up Queenie had learned harmful emotional outlets for her thoughts and feelings.)

Additionally, she begins to slowly repair her relationship with her mother as she begins to see her more clearly. Queenie writes of her mom, “She’d been so mentally and physically battered by men that she couldn’t find her voice anymore. But she was still my mum” (page 270). Finally, Queenie humanizes her mother in her eyes, and realizes that many of the struggles that Queenie has dealt with, her mother has also endured. She recognizes their similar circumstances and starts to empathize. “I’ve followed in her footsteps,” she says, “Like mother, like daughter. Except this time, I’m the one to blame” (page 258). Accepting the past for what it was and assuming responsibility over her own current choices, Queenie grows exponentially , concluding the book with a new, healthier outlook on her life, with family, friends, and no man (for now, anyway)!!

Queenie’s character arc was quite satisfying for me, and I was also happy to read about all of Queenie’s gal friends. Many of my favorite parts of the book were when the Corgis conferred. I loved reading about a supportive female friend group (except when Cassandra’s “tough love” texts bordered on just plain mean, even if accurate) and Kyazike and Darcy had such a sweet dynamic. I was also happy when Queenie and Kyazike had their own time together, as well as how Diana really warmed up to Queenie.

Maybe it was because I was rooting so fiercely for Queenie, I felt that Queenie’s downward spiral dragged on for a long time, with very few “wins” along the way. But rather than the book concluding with her finally attending therapy, the novel actually follows her throughout several weeks of counseling, detailing some of her ups and downs along the way. So this book actually covers a decent chunk of time during a pivotal point in her adulthood.

Overall, the plot contained enough drama to keep me interested, and I was invested in seeing Queenie’s recovery through until the end. Although it was a fairly predictable book, there was one twist that took me by surprise!

**SPOILERS** I’m very glad that Queenie didn’t magically fall in love with the perfect man at the end of the novel to seal her recovery (although for a moment I thought that’s what was going to happen with Chuck). I think it was very important for Queenie to learn how to love herself and set personal boundaries before she began a new relationship (casual or not). I’m pleased with the ending, and I admire her for forgiving Cassandra, who I would’ve probably dismissed from my dinner table.

Queenie and Carrie Pilby

About halfway through this book, I realized the lonely tone of the narrator reminded me of somebody else hopelessly lonely—Carrie Pilby! Earlier this year, I read and reviewed Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner, which is a novel about a young white woman living in New York City, attending therapy, and following a list in order to “put herself out there” socially ( read here ). Of course, there are quite a number of stark differences; first of all, Queenie is a Black woman, and faces a plethora of racially motivated mistreatments because of this one aspect of her identity, a sort of oppression that rich, privileged Carrie has no understanding of. However, if we look at Queenie as being about a young woman living in London, attending therapy, and following a list of items to help habilitated her, we notice some patterns.

Queenie is also far more sexual than Carrie Pilby , and is placed more firmly in our modern times, referencing the Black Lives Matters movement and including Queenie’s experience with the app OKCupid—which is huge technological progress from the classifieds that Carrie responds to in the newspaper. Both of these young women are lonely within a city and feel disconnected from their peers—albeit for totally different reasons, but point towards a shared female experience.

Because I read a lot of books written by women, I notice a lot of emotional trends, such as this peculiar brand of loneliness. Quite frankly, I’m glad that all these books exist, both Carrie Pilby and Queenie , because they both offer an emotional story about a young woman that readers can relate to, and find solidarity with. Earlier this year, I asked the question: Why do we not have a female Holden Caulfield? And the answer, as I’ve realized, is that we do! Carrie is our Holden, Queenie is our Holden, and so are the female protagonists of many other books that women have poured their hearts into, but we’ve just never read, because they haven’t been arbitrarily deemed “classics.”

Of course, I’m full aware that Queenie may never make its way into a school—it contains a medley of sexually explicit scenes and portrays some disturbing abuse and dissociation. But I am glad that this book exists, and I will celebrate Candice Carty-Williams for publishing this book so that young women who see themselves in Queenie can feel less alone, and have hope for their own healing (and maybe learn something from Queenie’s mistakes!).

The Problematic Men of Queenie

One of the aspects of this book that frustrated me was how Queenie would let men mistreat her without speaking up for herself. Granted, I understand that Queenie has learned from her society that what these men think is what the majority of people think, and that to stand up for herself will provoke violence upon her (like Roy conditioned her to think). However, I wish there was slightly more payoff at the end during which she yells at Adi, or explains to Guy just what he can go do to himself for being such a hog. (Unfortunately for my desires of revenge, Queenie’s therapy is working a bit too well and she moves on from them.)

Queenie does grow, and we see that when she goes out with Courtney; after realizing he has some rather strongly racist views, she argues with him for two hours. “It must be nice to be so detached from a life that someone like me actually has to live!” Queenie shouts at him at the end of their lengthy debate (page 302). It was incredibly gratifying to finally see Queenie tell someone off. Speak your truth, Queenie!

However, since many of the men were not told off, I felt inspired to do so myself. So without further ado:

Adi is an absolute pig, and it’s disgusting that he speaks to Queenie so graphically and casually, as though she were not a human being with feelings. He is fixated on Queenie’s butt and is not at all weary to exclaim so, which is another male trope we can witness in real life: men who feel entitled to remarking on women’s appearances. (Carrie Pilby herself comments on how she hates when random men tell her to smile—the PG version of catcalling.)

Guy is straight-up abusive and totally unapologetic that he only views black women as sex objects of conquest, which is utterly disturbing. He’s quick to ignore Queenie’s boundaries, like when he hits Queenie’s bum so hard that it hurts her quite bad (page 100), but then as soon as she starts to cuddle him afterwards, he rejects her and says he doesn’t like people touching him , expecting his own boundaries to be respected (page 102). He graphically tells Queenie what he likes about black women, which is—shocking—merely a lewd physical description of a stereotypical body figure.

Oh, and also Guy is a two-faced liar, so there’s that.

And Ted—what a pest! He stalks and harasses her for weeks, and then as soon as he rather assertively convinces her to have sex with him in a bathroom (which is brief and unsatisfying for Queenie), he avoids her and then files a report against her, causing her suspension from work? What a life-ruining jerk! To find out that he has an expectant wife is completely on-brand for him (and on-brand for all of the other men who pursue Queenie while in a relationship), and I was soooo glad when Queenie turns his emails into her boss and gets him fired. (Now this—this was enjoyable to read!!)

Which isn’t even to mention all the gross messages Queenie receives from total strangers on OKCupid. Why do these men think it’s okay to speak to women like this? They send the most brazenly sexual, disrespectful, profane messages. And yet, I must remind you reader: what occurs in this book happens to a lot of women very often . So if you are appalled by this behavior, then you should feel very empathetic towards women and especially Black women who actually have to put up with this crap.

Time and time again, in Queenie’s society and in our American society, Black women are treated as bodies and lumped together in likeness. It is deplorable how our cultures both fetishize and dispose of Black female bodies, just like we have for centuries . Perhaps the popularity of this book will shed some light on this unacceptable behavior and spread awareness that this is not okay . Queenie—although, yes, a fictional character—is a living, breathing human, and the people around her made it a habit to speak to her like she doesn’t even have emotions. She is repeatedly dehumanized by her society! And even when she’s in a relationship with somebody who probably loves her, she’s taught that her feelings ultimately don’t matter.

Tom is a spineless loser, and while he seems to be less harmful compared to the other men in Queenie’s life, he’s still not that great and it’s unfortunate that Queenie spends so much of the book pining after him. Although he has many good moments as Queenie reflects over their relationship, there are several times when he gaslights her or downplays his family’s racist behavior. More than a few times, Tom’s family makes uncomfortable race-related remarks, and when Queenie feels disturbed by this, Tom says things like, “He was joking, Queenie, don’t get worked up!” (page 38).

Let me ASSURE YOU, if any member of my family ever said “Was it the n***** in the pantry?” like Uncle Stephen did, whether or not it was in the presence of my boyfriend, that family member would have FIVE SECONDS to rebuke their statement and beg for forgiveness before I never speak to them again because I will honor NO relation of mine to a racist. My boyfriend’s basic terms of humanity are not the lofty topic of a dinner table political discussion, nor the punchline for a malicious and humorless “joke.” And the fact that Tom is perfectly willing to justify casual racism time and time again shows that he’s willing to be complicit and therefore on the wrong side of this argument, no matter how upset he is with how Queenie responds to this. There are so many ways to handle that situation without making Queenie, who already feels like an “other” in Tom’s family’s household, feel even more alienated. This, too, on Tom’s part, is emotional abandonment.

Tom’s family just says the worst things to her. During a Christmas game, Tom’s uncle tells the group they’ll split into two teams, light shirts and dark shirts, and then goes out of his way to point out that, despite Queenie wearing a white dress, “technically there’s a bit more dark” on her (page 133). How creepy! It’s like Stephen can only see her for a Black person and must point it out at every occasion as though she could have forgotten . Talk about a creepy uncle making you feel uncomfortable in your own skin at holiday gatherings.

So clearly, Queenie deserves better than that, someone who won’t feel inconvenienced by her feelings, but rather empathize with her and support her when she needs help.

I enjoyed this book, although I did not enjoy reading about Queenie’s suffering. While the novel has its minor shortcomings, overwhelmingly I think it brings up many important topics, including many of the everyday struggles of trauma survivors and Black women living within a racist society. It is rather explicit, so I do not recommend it for young audiences at all, nor is the prose particularly artful, however it is an incredibly valid perspective and a voice that needs to be heard.

Thanks so much for reading!

To read more book reviews by Slanted Spines, check out this page .

The Slanted Spines August Book pick is The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, a science fiction novel! On the last Friday of the month, I’ll post my book review, so grab a copy and read along with me!

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Book Review: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

By: Author Jen - MMB Book Blog

Posted on Published: 17 July 2022  - Last updated: 23 July 2024

Queenie was the debut novel by Candice Carty-Williams and it’s safe to say, it was a HUGE success.

Released in 2019, Queenie was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and went on to win Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. It was also named one of The Times, Guardian, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and Evening Standard’s best books of 2019.

Honestly, I have no idea what’s taken me so long to read this book! It’s been on my bookshelf for a while, so when Candice Carty-Williams’ new novel, People Person, was released, I thought it was time to get cracking with her first book.

Disclosure : This post may include affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases

Genre: Literary Fiction Author: Candice Carty-Williams Buy: Amazon | Waterstones Published: 2019

Queenie is a 25 year old, third-generation Jamaican-British woman trying to find her way in the world. After struggling through a breakup, Queenie’s life starts to unravel. Her issues with her friends and family are exacerbated and her mental health starts to suffer. With her confidence at an all-time low, Queenie finds herself in the arms, and beds, of several unsuitable men.

We follow Queenie as she makes increasingly questionable decisions as she tries to deal with the issues she’s facing.

Queenie Book Review

I really enjoyed this book. Queenie was such a frustrating yet sympathetic central character. I found myself rooting for her and wanting her to be happy. Her flaws, of which she had many, just made her seem more realistic.

I loved the supporting cast of characters and especially enjoyed the tales of her friend’s dating mishaps. The dialogue sparkled and I really liked the light-hearted moments.

Queenie isn’t just a breakup story. It tackles hard-hitting topics such as racism, injustice and mental health. Candice Carty-Williams expertly makes the switch from light-hearted and humorous moments, to grittier more emotional topics.

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza did an excellent job of highlighting systemic racism, and the importance of causes like Black Lives Matter. In this book, the exploration of racism is perhaps more subtle but still clearly something Queenie has to live with on a daily basis. The way she tries to validate herself by attracting white men, along with her identity struggles and her friend’s dismissal of Black Lives Matter, all show how racism is still very much a current issue.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the mixture of witty dialogue along with the more thought-provoking moments.

What should I read after Queenie?

If you enjoyed Queenie, I’d suggest reading People Person , also by Candice Carty-Williams. I’d also recommend reading Seven Days in June by Tia Williams.

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Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

• Publication Date: November 5, 2019
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
• ISBN-10: 1501196022
• ISBN-13: 9781501196027
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Hulu’s Queenie is a Masterful Study of Self-Growth

Plenty of comedies start off how Onyx Collective’s “Queenie” begins: a woman, supine in her gynecologist’s office, exposed, getting unexpected news. But “Queenie,” based on the book of the same name and created and executive produced by the author Candice Carty-Williams, is not your typical series.

In fact, our titular heroine (a superb Dionne Brown) is not pregnant, and what’s going on in her uterus sets up a different plot altogether. “Queenie” is primarily concerned with healing, showing what it is to do the work, as they say. When we meet her, she is slamming into the limitations of trying to be the fabled “strong Black woman.” Across the series’ eight episodes, she builds a new narrative and way of being that works for her, helping the rest of her family of Jamaican British family do the same.

But first though, “Queenie” gives us her descent to rock bottom. This show starts out bleak and gets worse as Queenie spirals. There’s humor, yes, but she’s dealing with a host of serious stuff—a history of abandonment, domestic violence, and betrayal—all of which are brought to the forefront thanks to a breakup and her estranged mother’s attempts to reconcile. It’s hard to watch.

To deal, she drinks too much. She has rough sex with strangers. She lets her work slide, endangering her budding career as a journalist. She’s just twenty-five, and lots of her decisions could be chalked up to the normal pitfalls of youthful exploration. But “Queenie” is clear that something else is happening in its realistic South London setting.

Our heroine—and it’s impossible not to root for her even as she makes repeated mistakes—is confronting an institutional set of challenges with an incomplete toolbox. She faces racism at work and in the dating pool. Sexism abounds wherever she goes, including her own mind. 

On her side, she has a rich cultural tradition to draw from in her Jamaican heritage. Her mother excluded, she has strong relationships with her multigenerational family who want the best for her and are ready to help—even if their ideas about what “the best” is and how to get there aren’t always compatible with hers. 

What she doesn’t have is good models for dealing with the hard shit that’s bubbling up in her psyche—she only knows how to push emotions down for everyone else’s benefit, rather than figuring out how to ask for help or process what she’s feeling for herself.

After five episodes of acting out and facing an unforgiving world, Queenie hits rock bottom. For viewers who make it this far, the rewards are rich. Over the remaining three episodes, Queenie transforms, slowly and laboriously but successfully. And here’s where the show shines, demonstrating what therapy can actually accomplish and how it works. 

In this back third, it artfully depicts how talking to someone helps Queenie rescue herself and nudge her family to be better. How she goes from believing that “no one wants me” (as she declares pitifully at one point) to valuing herself. And when she can see her own value, when the show has guided her and its audience through how that transformation can really occur, something beautiful happens.

Yes, Queenie gets a glow up—she does look better in a trick of cinematography, costuming, and acting. But she also feels so much better, emanating confidence. And with that newfound confidence, she can heal past wounds, talking to those who have hurt her and figuring out a path forward that addresses the issue for all involved.

In the end, “Queenie” is a tale of triumph but unlike many others in the genre, it really earns its happy ending. Queenie may get everything she (and the audience) could wish for but it doesn’t feel far-fetched—both she and the viewers have to work to get there. And that hard work makes your smile as the final credits role that much more meaningful. “Queenie” provides the deep satisfaction of watching a young woman come into her own, heal intergenerational trauma, and figure out how to be of service to herself and her community. It’s the happiest of endings made all the sweeter by the arduous journey to get there.

Whole series screened for review. Premieres today on Hulu.

Cristina Escobar

Cristina Escobar is the co-founder of LatinaMedia.Co, a digital publication uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media.

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Book Review: A Bold Profile of the James Webb Space Telescope

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Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos by Richard Panek. Little, Brown, 2024 ($29)

Having already chronicled a history of telescopes in his 1998 book Seeing and Believing , science writer Richard Panek boldly writes one of the first books about the telescope: the James Webb Space Telescope. Like any good profiler, Panek gets up close and personal with his subject, describing each layer of its sunshield as “the length of a long tennis lob and the width of a tissue.” Woven into the narrative is the importance of the public in shaping the mission’s trajectory, from electing leadership who fund the nation’s space agency to bestowing Internet virality on JWST’s first-released images of other worlds.

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LUCKY LOSER: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success , by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig

My family took its first steps on American soil on a spring day in 1989. An uncle named Boris who had escaped the Soviet Union years earlier was there to greet us at the airport in Queens, insisting, despite our exhaustion, on a tour of Manhattan. After a winding journey, we emerged from the gritty commercialism of Times Square to find ourselves on 56th Street, at the base of a featureless black obelisk.

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Queenie Paperback – November 5, 2019

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Publication date November 5, 2019
• Dimensions 5.31 x 1 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1501196022
• ISBN-13 978-1501196027
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gallery/Scout Press (November 5, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501196022
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501196027
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1 x 8.25 inches
• #272 in Friendship Fiction (Books)
• #814 in Black & African American Women's Fiction (Books)
• #3,090 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Candice carty-williams.

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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 52% 28% 14% 4% 2% 2%

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Customers say

Customers find the book lovely, compelling, and well-written. They describe the storyline as relatable, enjoyable, and entertaining. Readers find the humor funny yet poignant, and the dialogue specific. They find the insight enlightening, thought-provoking, and meaningful. They appreciate the vivid, full-bodied characters. Customers describe the book as heartwarming and lighthearted.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book lovely, easy to read, and compelling. They say the story is well-written and the author is talented. Readers also mention the book is a fast and well-developed read.

"...Sign of a great story and author. What an entertaining and heart warming story! Love!" Read more

"...I feel like the author is SUPER talented and the story definitely sucks you in from the beginning. I personally couldn’t put it down...." Read more

"...Queenie is such a well-developed , complicated, and lovable character. She's a disaster, but she's smart and funny...." Read more

"...They say it's funny and fun , a "Bridget Jones". NO. None of that, it's not a fun diary of situations that funny...." Read more

Customers find the storyline relatable, enjoyable, and heartwarming. They say the book has a good plot and the author did a really good job delivering the story. Readers also mention that the story is heartbreaking and heart wrenching.

"...Sign of a great story and author . What an entertaining and heart warming story! Love!" Read more

"...Its plot is familiar : woman in her mid-twenties (Queenie) flounders through relationships, work, and friendships...." Read more

"...I’m happy I finished. I think the ending was okay , but I’m surprised Queenie was discharged from therapy so quickly when it seems she had so much..." Read more

"...The story is heartbreaking and heart wrenching and gutsy and nauseating at times, too...." Read more

Customers find the humor in the book funny yet poignant. They also appreciate the writing and dialogue. Readers mention the book is a perfect combination of sisterhood comedy and social commentary. They say it's interesting to learn slang terms and expressions of different cultures.

"...It's really well-written and it's the kind of book that will remind you why you love reading, and why you're a people person after all." Read more

"...I watched the Series. But this book so ama!ing. This was so well written . I laughed cried. I didnt want it to end...." Read more

"...The writing is engaging and, though fit to their roles in the story and in their relationship to Queenie, the side characters feel full-bodied and..." Read more

"...The writing was pretty good but I like to do immersion reading and I noticed a lot of words and a few passages were different from the Audible vs...." Read more

Customers find the characters vivid, full-bodied, and relatable. They say the book is amazing and instantly connects them to the characters. Readers appreciate the accurate depiction of mental health crises and the honest portrayal of a young woman in subconscious turmoil.

"...What I love about this story is its masterful understanding of character . Queenie is such a well-developed, complicated, and lovable character...." Read more

"...in the story and in their relationship to Queenie, the side characters feel full-bodied and individuals on their own two feet...." Read more

"Queenie was a very interesting character with some highly questionable morals...." Read more

"...5 stars for entertaining and realism ." Read more

Customers find the book enlightening, thought-provoking, and meaningful. They say it discusses a lot of present topics and provides an interesting perspective. Readers also mention the book tackles tough topics like mental health and racism in the U.S. and abroad. They appreciate the message for young women and the seamless exploration of political and social issues.

"...in part because of its specificity and thoughtful exploration of intersectionality : being a dark-skinned, curvy black woman of Caribbean descent in..." Read more

"...It tackled so many tough topics like mental health, racism in the U.S. and abroad, toxic relationships, and family drama...." Read more

"...This is a good novel for book club as there are so many potential discussion points ." Read more

"...This book had a lot of relatable parts .I think many young women will be able to relate to this story and the characters...." Read more

Customers find the book relatable yet heartwrenching. They say it makes them laugh and helps them cry. Readers also say it's a modern story about mental health and relationships. They mention it comforts them and makes them say self-love is important.

"...I keep coming back to it because it comforts me , makes me laugh, and helps me to cry...." Read more

"... Heartbreaking , hopeful and eye-opening in equal measure. I loved this book." Read more

"...This book was not funny but actually really sad ...." Read more

"... Modern story about mental health and relationships . Main character 2nd generation immigrant which lends an interesting bent on the story...." Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book very slow for most of the time. They also say the storyline is basic and common.

"Something in the beginning of the book made this read extremely slow ...." Read more

"...It starts off a bit slow , but stick with it. Queenie's story is worth the read." Read more

"...Depressing, slow , frustrating, not at all the story touted on the back of the book description...." Read more

"...I felt like it started off slow , got really good in the middle and then was rushed and let me down closer to the end...." Read more

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Queenie - That she was!

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‘Agatha All Along’ and ‘The Penguin’ prove that the superior universe is on television

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There was no way to predict back when Adam West wore the Batman tights — back when Batman wore tights — that comic books would become the main driver of Hollywood content. The 1966 “Batman” movie (budget $1.48 million), sprung from the TV series, did make money, but only the most delirious studio executive or fan could have imagined that, after a 23-year break, Warner Bros. would wager $48 million on bringing back the Caped Crusader.

It was, needless to say, a bet that paid off, and today we live in the world that DC — and Marvel — made. That this success has had a not entirely healthy effect on the movies, if not the movie business, is a point often made — Martin Scorsese famously compared such films to theme parks. And even as they have become more technologically ambitious, they have grown predictable. They have their superficial variations, but as expensive propositions whose failure can undermine a studio’s bottom line, they are on the whole conceptually conservative, with even the artier installments tailored to give the fans what they want.

Television, as I have written before and surely will write again, has been much more interesting when it comes to superheroes. With its lower stakes, there’s been more formal innovation, from romantic comedy to family drama to noir soap opera, with a range of visual approaches, and — perhaps most important — space to develop character and character relationships.

Don’t have time for a ‘WandaVision’ rewatch? What you need to know for ‘Agatha All Along’

Agatha Harkness, the witch who was pulling almost every evil string in Marvel’s ‘WandaVision,’ returns in ‘Agatha All Along.’ Here is everything you need to know about everyone’s favorite musical magical girl (woman) before watching the Disney+ spinoff.

Sept. 18, 2024

Two new comic-sprung series premiere this week in a battle royale for attention. As if to underscore their ancient corporate rivalry, one, “ The Penguin ” (HBO, premiering Sept. 19), comes from DC, and the other, “ Agatha All Along ” (Disney+, now streaming) from Marvel. Each is a chapter in an ongoing canonical saga whose overall arc does not much interest me, especially given how many times these worlds have been rewritten, rebooted and retconned over the decades, how much there is to keep track of and how short life is.

“The Penguin” picks up from the 2022 film “The Batman” and will presumably lead to “The Batman Part II” in 2026; “Agatha” is reportedly the second installment in a trilogy that began with “WandaVision” in 2021, and more generally a cog in the machine that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, which always sounds like a part of the hospital I don’t want to end up in.

They are conceptually distinct and utterly different in tone yet share certain characteristics. Each focuses on a villain, something of a trend lately, though comic-book Agatha was created as a hero and is a bad person with a sense of humor, which makes her good company. Each plays with genre — like “WandaVision,” “Agatha” takes off on a variety of TV shows and tropes, while “The Penguin” is a straight-ahead mob story with comic-book variations and exaggerations. Both are superbly made; in terms of production and performance and smartly written scenes, they are nigh well unimpeachable.

‘The Penguin’ is the latest character study of the charming, rage-filled Batman villain

What makes the Penguin an iconic character? The creators of HBO’s ‘Penguin’ and a DC comic book writer explain his enduring appeal.

Sept. 5, 2024

In his earlier incarnations on the page and screen, the Penguin was a demented society swell whose signature accouterments were a top hat, a monocle and a trick umbrella. Here, in his first starring role, played (as in “The Batman”) by Colin Farrell under a thick impasto of prosthetics, the Penguin is a lower-class, much-scarred, mid-management mobster, whose deformed foot does give him something of a penguin waddle; Oswald Cobblepot, his official name for many years, has been bumped down to Oz Cobb. The Falcone crime family, which he serves, are standard-issue New York-area Italian-American gangsters, and Farrell seems to have studied James Gandolfini , whose general shape he has been padded to resemble, in crafting his delivery.

The meat of the matter is the Penguin’s drive to become the city’s criminal kingpin, which involves a good bit of lying, betrayal, some murder and more cleverness than his enemies credit him with. With its class consciousness and sentimental streak, it stands on the shoulders of Depression-era films like “Scarface,” “Little Caesar” and “The Public Enemy” — more than once is the phrase “dirty rat” uttered, and as in the latter film, the antihero loves his mother (Deirdre O’Connell), who here has dementia.

Besides his mother, Oz has only two significant relationships. One is with Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), a kid from the projects he takes aggressively, then half-tenderly, under his wing, and to whom he’ll wax nostalgic about the old neighborhood and get philosophical about life (“The world ain’t set up for the honest man to succeed”). The other, antagonistic, is with Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti, impressive as a kind of psycho Liza Minnelli), whose driver Oz used to be. She’s recently home from a decade in Arkham Asylum and ready to fight the underworld patriarchy. (Mirroring Oz, she has daddy issues.)

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‘Batman: Caped Crusader,’ a Prime Video cartoon series premiering Thursday, takes us back to a post-war Batman that feels surprisingly modern.

July 31, 2024

They’ll tussle over the control of a powerful drug called Bliss, and, as there are eight episodes to fill, the upper hand will flip between them like a ping-pong volley. Yet, despite flashback episodes that give each some psychological grounding, it’s hard to root for either of them — they’re both bad people! Still, things will come to a sort of end, nothing that can’t be picked up down the line. That’s how they roll in Franchiseville.

While you can jump into “The Penguin” (created by Lauren LeFranc) with little to no Batman knowledge — outside of a news report, the Dark Knight never appears here — it’s a good idea to watch “ WandaVision ” (which itself takes a little grounding in the Avengers) before moving on to “Agatha All Along.” (Both series were created by Jac Schaeffer.) Much will be evident, and funny, without it, but you’ll have a better time if you do. As before, the series is a comedy with passages of deep feeling.

“WandaVision,” to make things as simple as possible, concerned the residents of a New Jersey town called Westview who were being held hostage in various parodies of classic situation comedies (“The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Bewitched” and so on) by a grieving Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), in an attempt to live a life with Vision (Paul Bettany) that the Marvel screenwriters had denied her. Among those trapped in Westview was Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), also a witch, and not a good one, forced by Wanda into the shape of nosy, friendly neighbor Agnes — half Gladys Kravitz, half Millie Helper — and stuck there at the series’ end. Agatha got her own theme music (also called “Agatha All Along”) which went viral, charted in Billboard and won an Emmy for composers Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

“Agatha” begins not in a sitcom pastiche but with a dead-on parody of a prestige crime drama (“Agnes of Westview,” “based on the Danish series ‘WandaVision’ ”) in which Agatha finds herself in the role of a police detective investigating a murder. Into this hallucination comes rival Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), perhaps a badder witch than Agatha, in the guise of a federal agent, who will hector Agatha back in the relatively real world. We also get the first sneaky nod to “The Wizard of Oz,” which “Agatha” will reflect in a mirror darkly, when a deputy describes a corpse as “really most sincerely dead.”

Review: With the refreshing ‘WandaVision,’ Marvel gets an inventive sitcom makeover

With nods to “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Brady Bunch” and more, the Disney+ series is the rare Marvel property where humor is more than just decoration.

Jan. 14, 2021

In order to regain her powers, Agatha sets out to walk the dangerous Witches’ Road and has to tamp down her caustic antisocial tendencies to assemble the coven she needs to accompany her. This ragtag crew, all down on their luck, will eventually comprise Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata), the potions person; Alice (Ali Ahn), whose mother was a famous rock star witch; Lilia (Patti Lupone), getting by as a psychic; and bubbly Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp), dragged along to make up the number, who was transformed into Mrs. Hart in Wanda’s sitcom unreality and is not a witch. Tagging along is a mortal Agatha fanboy (Joe Locke) called only Teen (except when Agatha refers to him as “Toto”) because he’s under a spell that scrambles his name. Rio will drop in as well.

In the four episodes out for review, their journey will take them into other TV dramas — a Nicole Kidman-style upper-crust soap opera (“Huge Tiny Lies” is the title mentioned), and something resembling “Daisy Jones and the Six” — each with a puzzle to solve in order to move on to the next stage. Will they get to see the Wizard? Will poppies put them to sleep?

It’s all cleverly done and very funny but also suspenseful and a little scary, with a winning combination of the supernatural and the banal (the witches arguing about who was pitchy and who was flat when they sing a magic song). Agatha might not be a good witch, but she’s not wicked, and she has reasons. Hahn is hilarious, which makes her likable good company, whatever her shenanigans or cutting remarks.

Marvel has been producing television shows for more than a decade, but it has been on a creative tear since “WandaVision” with original, even weird series, including the Pakistani-American “Ms. Marvel,” “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” and “Loki,” which lean into comedy and have poked into corners the MCU accountants would never have been deemed fit for the bigger screen. You don’t need to know your Phase Four from your Phase Five, which we are apparently in now, whatever that means. By virtue of their artfulness, they can stand on their own.

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