Queenie

Queenie is exhausted. It’s not just that her boyfriend wants to take a “break” and now she needs to find a new place to live. Or that subsequently her work performance has suffered and her boss has definitely noticed. It’s more than the creeping anxiety and the panic that threatens to overwhelm her. It’s all of those things together, alongside a daily barrage of microaggressions. She is a strong young woman struggling to stay afloat and I rooted for her the entire time. Heavy issues are explored with as much ease and skill as the more humorous aspects of this remarkable and rewarding debut — the darkness is balanced so perfectly with the light. Queenie reads like a lightning storm, all dazzling brilliance with reverberations that can be felt in the bones. Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com

Queenie is struggling with her career, a break-up, friendships, and toxic men... not to mention institutional racism, an eccentric Jamaican family, and serious childhood trauma. Queenie carefully explores heavy themes with sensitivity and humor in this addictive debut novel. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN'S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT

"[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking." Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

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.

"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

"They say Queenie is Black Bridget Jones meets Americanah. But she stands in her own right — nothing can and will compare. I can't articulate how completely and utterly blown away I am." Black Girls Book Club

"An irresistible portrait of a young Jamaican-British woman living in London that grows deeper as it goes." Entertainment Weekly (ew.com)

"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 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.