Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams

This was the chosen book for the first week of our book club, a modest little club which consists of just myself and my very good friend Ekbal! I spotted Queenie on the shelf and, having also seen it featured heavily on many book reviewers' Instagram pages, it jumped out immediately. The beautiful cover certainly helps! The novel has been branded as Bridget Jones' Diary meets Americanah, and I cannot say this helped - why do reviewers always have to compare novels to others?!

When we met for our book club discussion (in Waterstone's cafe, of course), we found that we both felt very similarly about this one. The first half, maybe even the first two thirds of the book, I did not enjoy. There are some very dark themes, including a couple of pretty horrendous instances of sexual abuse, which really took me off guard. The quotes on the back of the novel compared Queenie, the protagonist, to Bridget Jones - which is seriously misleading. At times I really felt like I wanted to close it and stop reading. Not only that, but the overwhelming feeling of frustration is definitely present throughout. 

Queenie, a Jamaican-British woman, has recently split up from her long-term white boyfriend, Tom, and is suffering pretty badly. She makes many unhealthy and less-than-sensible choices, such as having unprotected sex with a string of pretty horrific men, which are a sad result of her poor mental health. Though despite the pity and sadness this evokes, the eponymous heroine is not what I would consider a likeable character, or a relatable one for that matter. I didn't become attached or particularly invested in the character, which is unusual for me as a reader, and what would normally draw from me extreme sympathy somehow didn't. 

One of the reasons for this lack of sympathy may be due to the evidence we see in a series of flashbacks Queenie has to their relationship. What she evidently doesn't realise is that she treated Tom pretty badly, and pushed him away a lot. He also did some questionable stuff, and his family were downright disgusting at times (exhibiting racist tendencies and underhand remarks, which Tom  shockingly did not defend), but Queenie never once accepted that she had also played a part in their failure with her hostility and inability to make an effort with him, which was pretty frustrating.

The string of white men Queenie decides to sleep with in order to get over Tom or fulfil her need for attention and acceptance are just all so horrendous. I'm not saying it is completely unrealistic, but for her to have such bad luck with every single man, and to be abused both physically and racially by all of them without even attempting to detach herself, is pretty hard to believe past a certain point. The author seems to pin this inability to choose a respectful and caring partner to the lack of trust Queenie has in men which began at a young age when she witnessed the abuse of her mother, and was also subjected to it herself. Somehow I just feel that the author didn't do this woman justice in how she dealt with everything that happened to her.

We also agreed that the indication that her issues at work were related to her race was not really validated in the novel. Yes, it may have played a part, but the reality is that she was pretty terrible at her job! She didn't turn up to work, was late, or spent her days chatting by the coffee machine and distracting her coworkers - if anything, she got away with a lot in not getting suspended sooner! 

The final third of this novel, and a few memorable moments throughout, did redeem it somewhat. Her friend Kyazike was a fantastically strong woman (though her overuse of "fam" and "innit" did play up to stereotypes A LOT which I was unsure about), and Darcy is just a lovely pillar of friendship and support throughout. Her Jamaican grandparents really made me laugh and were supportive of Queenie - albeit archaic in their mindset towards dealing with mental health at times - but I particularly loved the part when her grandad really cheekily embraced her decision to do something about it instead of just "getting on with it", and stood up to her grandma. 

There were A LOT of cliche and pretty corny moments in this novel which I could have spotted a mile off (don't want to include too many spoilers here) but ultimately I quite liked the ending, despite all of this. It was a feel-good ending whilst not just conforming to the "happily ever after", rather giving a quiet hope that things were moving forward in a positive way. Somewhere between a 2.5 and 3 out of five, star-rating wise - not quite what I had hoped for!