A journey to self-love

filled star filled star filled star star unfilled star unfilled
fictionfig Avatar

By

Queenie is a Jamaican 26 year old girl living in London. Queenie is recovering from a recent breakup from her Caucasian boyfriend of 3 years named Tom. Since the breakup, Queenie struggles with self-love and confidence. This book is described to be about her journey to accepting one-self, which is clearly very difficult at every turn.

She has a lot of issues, stemming from a rough childhood and inherited anxiety, and continues makes extremely poor choices throughout the book. She craves love and acceptance, but repeatedly sleeps with men, some quite abusive, without protection. Even going to a clinic for what? It’s really not clear. The doctor is suspecting she is possibly being pimped out. The clinic recommends safer sex, yet Queenie returns a few weeks later (again, for no real reason but to be tested for STD’s??) and tells them again she has been having rough sex without protection. She is surprised at the doctor’s reaction (???) and even more annoyed that the doctor sends a referral to therapy.

The rest of the book is just mistake after mistake. She proves to the reader countless times that she is incapable of caring for herself and being independent. It’s quite monotonous and begins to feel repetitive. The saving grace of Queenie’s life is some very supportive friends and her final decision to begin going to therapy. Even though she begins to make more of an effort to “fix” herself, her life continues to fall apart until she hits rock-bottom. Thankfully things begin to finally go her way and the author wraps the book up with a happy ending.

I have to say, I really disliked the book. While I appreciate the positive message about self-love and the healthy result she gets after moving past the stigma of therapy, the continuous toxic behavior and the undertone of racism was one-dimensional. There is one single chapter about being involved with Black Lives Matter but that really goes nowhere other than attending one protest and it never being mentioned again. It felt like an afterthought.

Even though I disliked this book, I think some would probably enjoy it, and perhaps it just wasn’t my style. I wish the author presented a stronger stance against the unhealthy sexual behavior she presents throughout the book, however the understanding is that Queenie is damaged and clearly needs help. And 300-ish pages later, I am happy that she finally found it. I gave it 3-stars.