First two reviews of the year!
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
I read this for a book group and was really keen to see what all the buzz was about. Unfortunately, I wasn’t entirely impressed (although as a 40-something mum living in the provinces, I’m probably not the target audience). It’s a very quick, easy read and I found it quite a page-turner – I stayed up late to find out how it would resolve, especially once the first half (which was basically Bridget Jones for Gen Z) had given way to the darker second half (which touched on things like mental health and the difficulty in finding your place in life when you’re struggling with basic things like finding affordable housing and jobs). However, I thought the book was nowhere near as clever as it thought it was, and I thought the treatment of Big Issues (BLM, online dating, abusive relationships) was actually pretty shallow, especially in Queenie’s rather lame pitches to her boss for stories that their newspaper should be covering. I was annoyed by the stereotypical characters (the “Corgies” – Queenie’s best friends – are seemingly there to tick off various demographics), and some of the characters rarely got beyond the two-dimensional (which was doubly annoying as others were really well written). I found Queenie herself irritating and entitled: she comes across as a bit of a nightmare in her relationship with Tom and as an employee. I do think that the novel touches on some important issues – for example, some of the hook-ups that Queenie has with horribly abusive men ties in with everything I’ve heard about the way in which young women are pressurised into rough sex or to do things that have been normalised by porn. It’s great to have these experiences highlighted in fiction, as well as the more sanitised version that’s normal in chick lit. I did really enjoy reading Queenie, I just didn’t think it was as deep as it wanted to be – and I actually think the Bridget Jones comparison is spot on. Talking of which…
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Christmas at the Island Hotel by Jenny Colgan
This is proper chick lit of a kind that I don’t read very often, but I’ve enjoyed books by Jenny Colgan before and I’m a sucker for books with a Christmas setting
and it was yet another 99p Kindle purchase. It’s the fourth book in a series that I haven’t read, but it still worked ok as a standalone book. Spoilt Norwegian rich kid Konstantin is sent to work as a kitchen boy in The Rock, a luxury hotel on the remote island of Mure, which is fictionally located somewhere between Shetland and the Faroes. While working in the kitchen, he meets shy Isla and, well, I’m sure you can imagine the rest. Siblings Fintan and Flora are struggling to get The Rock ready to open by Christmas, after it was left to them by Fintan’s husband Colton, who has died tragically young of cancer. You can probably imagine the sorts of hiccups and misunderstandings that happen along the way, just as you won’t be surprised that they finally get the hotel opened on time and it’s all a tremendous triumph. There are lots of amusingly quirky islanders, as well as a cartoonishly evil London Journalist who tries and fails to sabotage the hotel opening and a (quite funny tbf) highly strung French chef. Various Big Issues are covered in this one as well, including cancer, Syrian refugees, etc. But it doesn’t really pretend to be anything other than a piece of fluffy feelgood romance, and Jenny Colgan’s lightness of touch makes it a relaxing read. I particularly enjoyed the way she evoked the extreme northernness of the island and the ways in which it is, and isn’t, like the rest of the UK.
Two things did spoil it for me a bit: firstly it was appallingly edited, with references to “Edward” in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and various characters changing name/having their names spelt wrongly, etc. I’m surprised that an author as big as Colgan can’t get better editors, especially as Goodreads reviews suggest that this is a problem with the previous book as well. Secondly, the book contains the world’s most annoying 5 year old, who talks like a spoilt 3 year old, shouting “IT ME, IT AN ANGEL, LIKE ME” and “I DO GLITTER. I HELP!”, sulks, is generally mean and obnoxious and so on. In reality, she’d be in reception or Y1, so would be getting to grips with number bonds and phonics, not speaking like a dementedly bratty Peppa Pig. I’ve read a few books recently in which children behave in ways that are wildly different from what you would expect of a child their age (one of the biggest offenders in the other direction is Elly Griffiths – Ruth’s daughter Kate is a prodigy who speaks in full sentences at 14 months old and reads the Narnia books at 4). Have these authors just forgotten what it was like to have a child of that age?!