★★★☆☆
Queenie Jenkins, a 25-year-old Jamaican British living in London, is going through a lot. At the national newspaper where she works, she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers; a messy break up with her long-term white boyfriend causes her to seek comfort in all the wrong places; and the strained relationship she has with her mother is brought closer to the surface. As Queenie scrambles from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering where her life is going and who she wants to be.
Oh, Queenie. I wanted to love you so much. Believe me, I tried. Perhaps it was the hype Queenie received that made it fall flat or maybe it simply wasn't my cup of tea and I don't need to find any excuse to back up my unpopular opinion. However, there were parts of this story that I absolutely adored and found myself laughing out loud because of how much I could relate to certain situations. It was quite like being on a see-saw: one minute we're up high and loving life and then all of a sudden we're being pushed back down to the ground with a hard smack.
The family dynamics within this book is something I praise Carty-Williams for. Not every family is perfect and there will be members with whom you don't have a particularly strong relationship with, but that's okay. It's more normal than getting along with every single person you're related to. With Queenie, the one person she's most uncomfortable with is her mother Sylvie. After witnessing years of abuse directed mainly at Sylvie, their relationship has suffered. Carty-Williams provides the reader with a unique insight into the mind of someone who wants to fix this but doesn't know exactly where to start. The advice offered from different members of her family, from her grandparents to her teenage cousin, are all helpful to those going through that outside of this fictional story. The whole concept created is that family members might not get along, but at the end of the day they'll always be there to support each other when it matters. If you want one reason to read this book, take that message and go for it.
Talk of mental health was a topic widely discussed throughout the book. It's important it be more spoken about that those seeking help through therapy might not have made the decision overnight. Queenie went through so much before finally deciding to see someone and talk about the issues that have caused her panic attacks, PTSD, and depression. It was refreshing to read a book that didn't give the impression that one visit to a therapist will fix everything or that therapy was only the done thing in American TV shows. Along with suffering with her mental health, there is one other thing Queenie is a victim of: racism. The casual comments from her sexual partners were enough to make me feel nauseous, but there was also the issue of her being blatantly shut down at work for wanting to put focus on the Black Lives Matter movement. I got so excited at the idea of Queenie standing up for herself and running with what was important, but all we got was a three-and-a-half page chapter that only scratched the surface of a march. I just wanted more.
Now the character of Queenie was someone I just couldn't bring myself to like. Yes, she had funny lines and I could relate to her inner monologue (which makes me incredibly self-aware considering I wasn't a fan of her), but the character development was almost non-existent. Her decisions frustrated me to no end and at points I wanted to jump into the book, grab her by the shoulders and give her a good shake. Why would one be so willing to do whatever creepy men ask - no, tell - her to do? The sex wasn't an issue in the sense of her having so many encounters, it was the lack of clear consent and protection that gave me a headache. Towards the end of the book we see Queenie taking small steps back into normality, but I think to prove just how much she grew, we needed the book to be longer; what happened at the end should have been in the middle and then from that point we would have been taken on a journey of self-empowerment. That's what would have given it the five stars.
After reading this review, there might be the question of why I gave it three stars instead of one or two. It wasn't a bad book, it was simply okay. If you're after a quick read that deals with serious topics, I'd still recommend.
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