Book 7 - Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Reading date - May 2020

My mate got sent two copies of this book so she gave one copy to me.  I wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially when it was a book bringing gift-horse.

I love this book.  It's modern, it's the life of a black woman and it tells it as it is.  There is no sugar-coating at all, you believe all the characters and I could really empathise with Queenie.

This is one of the shortest reviews I've put up here because I don't want to give the story away.  The book follows Queenie dealing with a break-up, her family, her friends, finding a new boyfriend, the micro-aggressions black and brown women have to deal with at work and falling in love with someone at work.  It's about Queenie just dealing with life.  That is about as much as I can say without spoiling what happens in the book.  There were bits in the book where I got really angry, where I got really sad and small bits where I was happy.  I wouldn't say it was a miserable book or a "sunshine and rainbows" book, it's a real book.

Read it, it's definitely worth your time.  I really hope Candice Carty-Williams writes more.  There is an abridged version of the book available on BBC Sounds (I'm listening to the autobiography of Maya Angelou on there..amongst other things).

Came back to edit to say that it's currently 99p on Kindle.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lockdown is dun out ere

Image
July 9 2020 So, the lockdown is pretty much over.  The only things that remain closed are offices (we work from home), the theatres and cinemas.   *update* As of July 24th, you can't go shopping without a mask. It is already compulsory to wear them on the tube but now you have to wear them everywhere apart from when you go out to eat or drink..which I think is really stupid but we need to get back to some kind of normality. I'm still reading so I'm going to carry this blog on with the books I read but there's no way I will get through books as fast as I have been doing for the past three months.  As I write this, my current book is The Water Dancer, of which I am halfway through.  I took a trip to Poundland the other day and found them selling more than kid's books. Apparently, this is nothing new.  I picked up The Nix (wanted it for ages) and a book by a Punjabi author I had never heard of.   *updates to this*: I have finished The Water Dancer an...
Read more

Last book of 2021 - The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Image
Reading date - December 2021 You know sometimes you see a book mentioned everywhere and then the author releases the follow-up book and you hear that mentioned everywhere, too?  That is how I came across this book. It had been hyped up to death and I thought I should give it a try.  I will never, ever learn.  I know that these books that are hyped up always fall short for me but still, I fall for it.  Seldom have I read a book on the bandwagon which I have loved as much as everyone else. Anyway, this book is a murder mystery which started out ok but the more I read, the more annoying and badly written it got.   I am trying to be nice about this book but I struggling.  My book of 2021 is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I loved this book so much that I bought everything she has written.  This never happens to me with authors.  I have read The Little Friend and am working my way through the Goldfinch.  I LOVED TSH. The Maidens is a book ...
Read more

Book 75 - One of Them by Musa Okwonga

Image
Reading date  - April 2021 I will begin this review by copying the following from the description of the book:  "Woven throughout this deeply personal and unflinching memoir of Musa’s five years at Eton in the 1990s is a present-day narrative which engages with much wider questions about pressing social and political issues: privilege, the distribution of wealth, the rise of the far right in the UK, systemic racism, the ‘boys’ club’ of government and the power of the few to control the fate of the many. One of Them is both an intimate account and a timely exploration of race and class in modern Britain." What I expected from this book is not what I got from it.  For some reason, I thought this would be a biography of Musa's life, from birth to modern day.  I should have paid more attention to what the description said. This book is brilliant, Musa has a skill where he writes about the everyday and mundane (to him) in a way which makes reading about it an absolute joy...
Read more