Book Review: Queenie

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

You’ll hear me say this a lot on this blog, but I could not put Queenie, the novel by Candice Carty-Williams, down. I tore through this book in about 48 hours (of course, I was on a week-long hiatus from work and school, so that facilitated my reading spree).

At its core, this is a book about a breakup, but it doesn’t end the way Hollywood has trained my brain to expect it would. After Queenie, who the book is named for, is broken up with by her long-term boyfriend, she goes on a journey of self discovery and growth. I anticipated that the story would end with Queenie meeting someone new and starting a new relationship. However, Carty-Williams defied my expectations with a refreshingly modern ending.

Over the course of the novel, you see Queenie testing and strengthening many of the non-romantic relationships with her life, including her relationships in her job, grandmother, younger cousin Diana, and charismatic and supportive group of girlfriends. Although she doesn’t always see eye to eye with the people in her life (or with her responsibilities at work), these relationships are what ultimately get Queenie through a challenging year. In the end, you can see Queenie begin to define herself by her professional success and relationships with family and friends, instead of by her relationship with a man.

While Carty-Williams’ book is fictional, it taught me a lot about what it’s like to be a Black woman in a predominantly white society. I’m a white woman and have spent my life in mostly white communities. This book showed me the daily discrimination and injustice many people of color face in communities like the ones I have always lived in. Throughout the book, Queenie experiences discrimination, microaggressions, and racism in almost every aspect of her life. White men fetishize her on dating apps, a child at the pool calls her a sea monster, coworkers disparage the Black Lives Matter movement in passing, and her ex-boyfriend’s uncle uses the n-word when referring to a character in the game Clue; the list goes on and on. It was really eye opening for me to see how racism can be infused into so many aspects of day-to-day life, and I’m glad this book has helped me begin to understand what that’s like.

You can buy Queenie here.

Rating: 5 stars

Rating Scale:
5 Stars: I love this book!!!
4 Stars: Pretty good
3 Stars: Good
2 Stars: Not for me
1 Star: Truly dislike