Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Genre: Fiction, Diverse 

People who should read this: If you like contemporary diversity filled with current day issues, mental health, and fighting racial issues. 

“We all watched, being hit by bullets of sorrow and anger as family members and friends of black men and women who had been killed unlawfully stood up on that podium one by one and recounted not just how those who had been lost had died but how they were kind, they were loved, they had children, they were children.”

I’m a huge supporter of own voice work and that’s the reason I picked up Queenie in the first place. But when a book feels like it was written to ride the diversity train, I have a problem. These people take away the hard work of every other author fighting to get their chance.

Queenie had the potential to be an amazing book. Carty-Williams breaches social topics that need more discussion and she paints a clear picture of anxiety. But after that, she went wrong and fast. I understand that people of color don’t get the same opportunities in life. They struggle to make it to school every day. They struggle to pay their bills. But writing doesn’t take a degree. Writing can be taught by simply reading a ton of books - and in case the rest of the world forgot, libraries are free. There are two things you need to be a good writer, patience and time. The more you read and practice writing, the better you’ll become. My rant is that Queenie is a poorly constructed book that, in my opinion, should never have been published. 

Yes… I’m being harsh. Yes… There might be a bit of bitterness in my words. (She got a television show out of this!) But why should I support something written just for the hype? I could do the same thing and sell my soul for the sake of getting published. I chose to write a good book.

Here’s the thing, when books like this get sensationalized, they turn people off from reading own voice books and they can take the spotlight away from really well constructed books like All American Boys and The Hate You Give. (If you haven’t read these books, please do. Have you heard of the first one though? It talks about police falsely arresting people of color and it’s eye opening. It wasn’t written for the sensational wave. It was written well and I guess we’re just not selling books like that anymore.)

“We sat on the ground in the streets, all being lifted out of our exhaustion when a new chant, this time a statement of truth rather than an objection to chaos began, and echoed into the night.” 

So what’s wrong with Queenie? How am I justified in feeling this way? We’ll start with the most obvious point - it has nothing to do with story or own voice. All of the sentences are poorly constructed. They’re long, drawn out affairs that pull readers out of the story. On many occasions, I got lost in all the commas and had to go back to the start of the sentence, half a paragraph later, to understand what was actually being said. Words were repeated in the same sentence. It was just a jumble. And the worst part is, a lot of it should have been caught by an editor. The entire book should have been rewritten. 

Plot wise… there was just too much. Carty-William kept throwing in diverse subjects and staying surface level. It was like shouting at the shining gun and then never shooting it later. This is another example of how the reader is pulled out of the story. What is someone supposed to learn when you’re jumping from topic to topic? How about a few topics are covered and the rest are left for another book. The topics weren’t even blended into the story - they were forced in. The plot was cut and shaped to fit a rally or racial encounter. Even the mental health felt thrown in during the second half and it didn’t cover the mental illnesses that the protagonist exhibited in the first place. 

Carty-Williams also villainized every white man in the book. There wasn’t one nice guy. Not even a mention of one that served her coffee. Instead of creating a morally grey guy either, she pushed them over the top, adding in traits to make them the worst humans to walk this earth. No bueno to me. I get there are real people like this in this world, but it’s also unrealistic if you’re saying every guy is this way.

And lastly, Queenie’s character was a complete mess. Meet Queenie at the beginning - strong intelligent, had a long time boyfriend. Boom… 180 degrees and we have a whole new character making completely different decisions. This doesn’t work for the story later, so lets change her again so we can get what we want out of the story. This is one of the biggest writing no nos. You want your character to do something outside of their norm, write another book with a completely different character. You can’t shape and mold a character to fit a story. They have to stay true to what you made them.

“... worried that the IUD had maybe bee absorbed into my womb, the way I still worried that every tampon I’d ever inserted was still knocking about inside me.”

Can I say anything good about this book?

Let me think….

Actually I can. I loved the diversity in it. Carty-Williams brought up some good points I haven’t seen in a book before. She didn’t shy away from the hard stuff. I also appreciated that she added in anxiety. The more mainstream talking about mental illness is, the better society will be. People won’t have to feel like they’re alone. I just wish it had come in a better package. The potential was there, it just needed to be rewritten a few hundred times. Or else, an editor that knew what they were doing should have taken the wheel. I’m curious to see how the show does. For now, I’m going to hop back on my bitter train and let the tears fall onto my current work.

Happy Reading

Love Kait

Reading Challenge: 70/100