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Queenie cover art

Queenie

By: Candice Carty-Williams
Narrated by: Shvorne Marks
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Summary

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Queenie is a twenty-five-year-old Black woman living in south London, straddling Jamaican and British culture whilst slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white, middle-class peers, and beg to write about Black Lives Matter. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie finds herself seeking comfort in all the wrong places.

As Queenie veers from one regrettable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be? - the questions that every woman today must face in a world that keeps trying to provide the answers for them.

A darkly comic and bitingly subversive take on life, love, race and family, Queenie will have you nodding in recognition, crying in solidarity and rooting for this unforgettable character every step of the way. A disarmingly honest, boldly political and truly inclusive tale that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and acceptance and found something very different in its place.

©2019 Candice Carty-Williams (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Critic reviews

"Inspirational, funny and wise." (Kit de Waal, author of My Name Is Leon)

"A deliciously funny, characterful, topical and thrilling novel for our times." (Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize)

"Brilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking." (Jojo Moyes)

"A must-read novel about sex, selfhood, and the best friendships that get us through it all." (Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City)

What listeners say about Queenie

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing, had potential

The reading was good to some extent although some of the accents were more stereotypical than realistic.

The overall story line had something there but was kind of lost with unnecessary texting dialogue, slang and random encounters that were not detailed enough.

There was no real character growth or development for instance just skimming over her therapy sessions which could of gone into a lot more detail than her just being full of self-hate and the victim at every encounter.

Things such as Brexit, BLM, gentrification and urban dictionary where dashed in to make it seem more up to date and relevant but didn’t really add anything to the story. The racism of the white men throughout the story were cliche and there was an odd moment with the whole story line of “ted” which made no sense.

The story ended quite abruptly with no clear indication of what Queenie has learnt through all of it as she was going to revert back to her old ways if it wasn’t for Darcy telling her not to.

All the women seem to have men problems and all the men seem to be problems in someway which gave nothing to their characters as they were all just brushed aside in the end.

I just felt the whole thing quite juvenile, which was really disappointing as there were so many 5 star reviews. The cover was beautiful and the story line and concept itself was good if it had been more detailed, written and portrayed better. There was no accountability from Queenie and instead she made it about race all the time. She accounted her job problems to race when in reality she didn’t do anything but gossip and bunk most of the time.


As a black female I didn’t feel represented or seen but more stereotyped and cliched with no true resolution. There were just too many points the books was trying to touch on but not enough detail about them to really understand them. For instance, not one person who made racist remarks was called out acknowledged and learnt e,g Tom, Tom’s uncle, Courtney etc, she doesn’t like black men from one bad encounter which wasn’t really delved into, no real growth from Queenie herself, except getting her life back on track, and therefore I just couldn’t connect with it as well as I should and made it difficult to enjoy. It is disappointing because I really like the author and I had high hopes for this.

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48 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Queenie

This is my first review. I’ve been compelled to write it having enjoyed the book so much.

Queenie, whilst predictable, has the quintessential coming of age (in your twenties/thirties) that captures superbly the essence of what it feels to be a woman who has gone through anything that makes you feel like you don’t belong.

It balances the need to feel accepted and what makes being a black woman so difficult. For me, I laughed and I felt immensely sad as the parallels with my own life were bought to life by the writer. In so many ways, the feeling that you are not alone is so important.

It was refreshing to listen to a story with a black protagonist and was narrated perfectly. There were so many things throughout the story that I found myself laughing aloud to, or predicting coming from a West Indian family which didn’t ever feel cliché. Empowering women is not a phrase I am fully a fan of, but the book does just that. It articulated the things which we go through as women and more specifically as black women without lowering the value of other ethnicities, the labels which are applied to us throughout our lives. I always thought it was just me - until recently and this just reinforces that actually, the things that aren’t spoken about are just hushed by shame. This book opens a discussion on the factors that affect us, both as black women and as women in general. The moments of hope, despair and solitude, that we try so hard not to let others see.

It is only as I have reached my thirties that I have come to realise that things are different for black women and the connection that I made made me root even more for our heroine. There’s a Queenie in us all, regardless of colour.

Solid 7/7.

I look forward to more books by Candice and plan on purchasing a paper copy for my little sister.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Mixed up mess

I was really looking forward to this but found it hard going and ended up forcing myself to finish it. The main character suffers from relationship and anxiety issues - the result of her as a child witnessing the abuse her mother suffered at the hand of her partner - and her also being target of his verbal abuse. But she does so many stupid things and her friends are awful, her boss and work colleagues are horrible, her ex boyfriend is terrible, all the men she meets are horrendous..... They're all completely vacuous people and for someone with a great journalism job she just doesn't seem very interested in anything. She's got an amazing job but spends her time emailing or on her phone to her friends or chatting. No-one picks her up on this for ages?! Bonkers. She finally signs up for counselling. Unfortunately the reader has already worked out why she is messed up, so waiting while Queenie slowly works out the reasons for her behaviour in her counselling is just stating the obvious. It does pick up slightly towards the end - but that was maybe just because it was the end.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Positive mental health

The exploration of mental health and how issues can spiral is a real positive for the novel. It feels very real, while the writing and the voice is top notch. But things do get a touch repetitive in the middle section and a few areas I feel could have been delved into further. I would still recommend as the topics are vitally important to discuss, and I do think Candice is a good writer.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Refreshingly Riveting

Narrator is incredible!
I inhaled this book in a couple of days.
It made me laugh and it made me want to cry.
Queenie is relatable, raw, and human! She makes mistakes like the rest of us but didn’t fail to give me a warm dewy feeling when I finished!

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Tediously Tiresome Traits

The protagonist Queenie is unrelatable and boring. Her best friends seem like more interesting characters...It has a good starting point but then goes downhill. I’m slightly annoyed as I had seen so many 5 star reviews and I wonder, which aspect was 5 star?

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7 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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A Challenge to get through

Im not entirely sure of the intended audience. If this was to come under the title of Young Adult fiction, then the some of the scenes are inappropriate for teenagers. Equally the content and the way it is written is too simplistic. The narrative is very repetitive. There Is very little development of character, only by the end and this seems very rushed. The storyline is very predictable and I found the narration very stereotypical in a very cringe way. I found the voices very jarring to the point to made it a very difficult listen. I never give bad reviews....unfortunately there is very little I could praise about this story.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great! Listened twice!

Shvon's voices brought characters to life. Its lighthearted, relatable and easy read ! I listened twice on Audible and I'm sure I'll listen again

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6 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not for me, when maybe it should be

Now, this book may not really aimed it me. I understand my privilege. A 40-something able-bodied white hetrosexual male In 21st century England, I am very unlikely to be discriminated against, feel threatened, abused.
But I do want to learn and I'm also privileged to have access to material at my fingertips that can educate how non white males have to bend and break to adjust within a world seemingly made for me to breeze through life as relatively safely as I like.

I dont consciously discriminate but I know I will. So educate me. I will pass it on and so forth and the world becomes more tolerantant, ephathic and understanding. Just whatever you do, don't exclude me. I'm the interested party. Be smart. Events both sides of the Atlantic the last few years have proved it backfires to alienate and patronise those most in need of learning.

So where to start. Well every one of the 10-20 or so male characters is despicable. Every single male past and present, family member, work colleague or prospective partner so extreme and cartoonish, any male reader unconscious of their own failings wouldn't recognise why this may have anything to do with them. All to be dismissed and none that men can think "Be more like him from now on". If this is whats thought of every man then why am I bothering? I don't think females come out of it well either. A demographic of friends with nothing in common that even Richard Curtis might think was too much. Id be shocked if female readers weren't left dismayed by how vacuous they all are. Only the young cousin had seemed capable of anything beyond ridiculing men.

Queenie may be closely or loosely autobiographical (I haven't yet read any interviews / reviews) but each situation was so relentlessly grotesque page after page, I literally couldn't believe it. Her boyfriend siding with his Uncle casually sayin N-word during Cluedo, a new boss advising she's lucky to work with "people like her", a friends family mentioning "adopting" an African baby in a magazine to impress. Every white passer by in a Brixton nightclub or swimming baths like they've dropped in from a Jane Austen novel. An article on BLM movement to be reworked as Black Dresses Matter because its nearly Christmas. The brilliant narrator didnt deserve me shouting what I thought of it all throughout.

Maybe I've got it massively wrong. There seems to be enough 5* rating to suggest I probably have. I'd imagine the book to be too explicit for young adults but I can also see it having a television audience in the future and hopefully smarter, or in my opinion it could push anyone who wants to understand further away.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great Book for Young Black Women

Realistic glimpse into the life of a modern young black woman. Loved This Book ❤️

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4 people found this helpful