Queenie Is Working on It

LoveReading Says

Rippling with a sense of rebuilding, renewal, and so much love through so much chaos and heartache, Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie is Working on It sees the incomparable Queenie face fertility worries, relationship angst, hilarious hook-up scenarios, and structural racism in a page-turner that’s also funny, romantic and emotionally resonant.

Research gets real when Queenie, now 33, goes undercover at a fertility clinic for an article. discovering report after report that reveals blatant structural racism. In the wake of her wonderful, well-meaning British-Jamaican grandparents remarking that back in their day, she’d have had three children at her age, Queenie discovers that she’s “hormonally challenged”. What’s more, her doctor says her BMI is too high to qualify for NHS-funded IVF, which is what leads Queenie to the gym, and to a new hook-up who provides plenty of hook-shaped hilarity...

At the same time, Queenie’s in an on-off situationship with Hot TfL Man, and still not over Frank: “The man who, three years ago, had smashed my heart into a million pieces”. Though she ended things between them, Frank seeing someone else makes her “feel like my heart has been launched into the sun”. If that wasn’t enough, an exciting new project for her media platform, The Good Sis, is being undermined, and she’s subjected to manipulative white women’s tears at her friend Darcy’s Jane Austen-themed hen do.

As Queenie’s best friend Kyazike puts it, “But we’re all learning, sis... And we’re all growing up. It doesn’t stop. Doesn’t matter how old you are”, which cuts to the core of Queenie’s uplifting journey. Incisive and authentic, fast-paced and funny, Queenie is Working on It is as readable and relatable as the best contemporary novels, with the thought-provoking depth of literary fiction.

Joanne Owen

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