Queenie – 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.
Video Review: Queenie
Editorial Reviews
Review
“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
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About the Author
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 underrepresented writers. She contributes regularly to i-D, Refinery29, BEAT Magazine, and more, and her pieces, especially those about blackness, sex, and identity, have been shared globally. Queenie is her first novel. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @CandiceC_W.
Originally published: March 2019
Author: Candice Carty-Williams
Genre: Psychological Fiction