Queenie

Candice Carty-Williams

Mar 2019 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

*SOON TO BE A HULU ORIGINAL SERIES*

*ONE of NPR’s and TIME’s BEST BOOKS of the YEAR * NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK of the YEAR by WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, and BOOK RIOT!*

“A book that sneaks up on you...I am hooked.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author

This acclaimed and “welcome debut from a seriously talented author” (New York Post) is a disarmingly honest, unapologetically black, and undeniably witty novel that will speak to those who have gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-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.

“A must-read novel about sex, selfhood, and the best friendships that get us through it all” (Candace Bushnell, New York Times bestselling author), Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.

Ratings and reviews

Queenie is a Queen Queenie is not your typical nice girl. She is loud she is flawed and she is real. I loved how she was determined to get back up even after her long term relationship ended in such an unresolved way. I found myself screaming Queenie stop doing this, after she let people around her treat her badly. I couldn't believe she would allow people to do this, but the more I read the more I saw myself in her. I stated to understand that when you are feeling so low you will allow people to use you. This story is real and not a fairytale. It has an extremely realistic view of what depression and anxiety look like. Queenie also has to battle against her own family to show them she needed help, since in her culture mental health is not something you talk about out loud. I would recommend this story to anyone needing a good laugh and a realistic story.

Mental health is paramount and we should normalise lending a helping hand,I read it on my way to Dubai but I forgot it at the Dubai airport as I was taking my PCR test and now am hear to finish from chapter 13!

Queenie represents black women, and her struggle to be accepted hits home. A must-read.

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.