Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - Queenie

Queenie is a captivating tale about a young woman struggling with her mental health. Throughout the book the protagonist gets put through trials and tribulations that push her towards her breaking point. While it took me awhile to get into the book, once I got 40% in I was hooked on the storyline. Everything in this book comes full circle.

From complicated families to struggling with self love this book takes us on a winding trail to revelation and hope. Queenie is a complicated character and if you like complex narratives this read may be for you

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beckyyreadss's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I wanted to read this book as I've heard so many good things about it. My wonderful friends bought this book for me for my birthday. This book was not what I was expecting it to be.

This book is based around 25-year-old Queenie Jenkins who is a Jamaican British woman living in London and she is 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.

Wow, this book was difficult and it’s only when I was about 50% through that I realise that this is about her mental health . . . and I think that was the point of it. It was very hard-hitting and brutal and shows you how mental health can affected different people and not even realise it until they’ve hit wrong bottom. Queenie had a lot of bad stuff happen to her from the moment of page 1 up to the last chapter and you can see how she handles it and how things got worse and worse. I would 10000% as always check the trigger warnings with this book as it was brutal and the way that Candice describes Queenie’s mental health can be a bit triggering. I didn’t have anything to hate about this book, I just thought it was really slow-paced and heavy.

I would love another book to see how Queenie is doing later on in life, when she’s back on track but not as a chick flick or anything like that. Just a little novella on how Queenie and the Corgis are doing.

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bootlegfrank's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The author’s writing style felt contemporary, fresh which made reading the book a enjoyable and not a linguistic chore. That being said it deals with very intense themes and reflects back how complicated people/our lives are.

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gcrespo97's review against another edition

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challenging emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book gave me so much anxiety but it was so good I couldn’t put it down. I had so much love for the main character and wanted things to work out for her so badly.

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lamela's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book really showed me the connection between racial discrimination in addition to sexism and body shaming and mental health, which was addressed by exit racism a little, but not in depth. But learning about this topics and reflecting upon my privileges as a white women questioning her sexuality through reading a dark-comedy fiction book was a great way. Although I really struggled with the dark humor in the beginning, the book got me hooked. I was suffering with the protagonist as she knowingly repeated her self-sabotaging behaviour, while at the same time trying to acknowledge that I can relate to this so much. I read some reviews criticizing the dramaturgy of the last third of the novel saying that all the characters takeaways are pressed into the end. Broad spoiler

However, I found this to be very authentic because from my own struggles I can say that it is natural to continue with self- harming behaviour evenif you know that you should stop and that only after a breakdown, you acknowledge that you need to change your situation and that it takes time until you understand why what happened and even longer that you can take life-lessons from that.

Overall a rollercoaster and a heartwarming book.

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