Queenie
Queenie Jenkins is twenty-five, Jamaican-British, working a newspaper job where her pitches about Black Lives Matter get politely ignored, and freshly on a break from a long-term relationship that she is quietly sure will turn into a reunion. It does not. As the break hardens into a breakup, Queenie spirals through a series of men who treat her body as an experiment, a best-friend group chat that is louder than her own judgment, and a therapist she keeps almost telling the truth. Candice Carty-Williams's 2019 debut is sharp on the particular exhaustion of being the only Black woman in the room, on the way grief uses sex as a muffler, and on how a messy protagonist can still be taken seriously by the novel around her.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Queenie
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After a break with her white long-term boyfriend, Queenie Jenkins spirals through bad decisions, worse men, and a job that won't take her seriously, while her loud Jamaican family and best friends drag her back.
Yes. Hulu and Channel 4 released an eight-episode adaptation of Queenie in 2024, with Candice Carty-Williams as showrunner. The show preserves the novel's voice and London setting.
Queenie has been described as a Black British answer to Bridget Jones's Diary, but is much more specific to its protagonist's experience as a Jamaican British woman in London. The tone is sharper and the themes heavier than Bridget Jones.
Queenie was written by Candice Carty-Williams, published in 2019 by Blumenbar.
Queenie is 392 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Queenie takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Queenie is a standalone novel by Candice Carty-Williams, not part of a series.
Queenie is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.