#TNReads: Real Quick Reviews for Lazy Readers Featuring Candice Carty-Williams

To compare this book to Bridget Jones’s Diary is apt…on a very surface level. Sure, it’s about a young British woman who’s quirky and sort of bumbling her way through friendship and dating, but it’s also about much, much more. Queenie isn’t necessarily a fun romp through modern dating – it’s also depressing, harsh, uplifting, cringe-inducing, hilarious, and hard to watch (read). So yeah, it’s pretty much modern dating in a nutshell.

This book goes to some really dark places that I wasn’t expecting. While Bridget Jones is clumsy and cartoonish, Queenie is a more true to life version of that trope. She’s just gone through a break-up she never saw coming, and still thinks will disappear. She has all these emotions she doesn’t know how to deal with, and so she doesn’t. She goes on a binge of casual sex and bad decisions instead until it all comes crashing down around her. And while most of us haven’t experienced a rebound at this level, we’ll all been there in one way or another. Bad choices abound when the person you thought you loved decides they don’t want you anymore…

On top of Queenie’s heartbreak is something that a some of us don’t have to deal with on a daily basis – inherent racism. Her ex was white and she maintains that she’ll only date white men, but as expected, that comes with its fair share of hardships. Her ex’s family treated her with casual racism that he never took the time to defend her against; the men she meets on dating apps treat her like an exotic conquest, never bothering to get to know her; even her friends say the wrong things some times. It was hard to read about, but as a self-proclaimed liberal white woman, really enlightening and heartbreaking. Tied up with her anxiety and placelessness, it makes your heart hurt for Queenie.

Queenie explores dating, yes, but in the end, it’s more about mental illness and dealing with it in a modern world while also trying to date, and please your family, and maintain your friendships, and keep your job. This book will make you cringe, but for me, it was more out of familiarity than anything else. I saw myself in some of Queenie’s less than perfect choices, and it brought me back to the mental place I was in at that time…and made me glad I had pulled myself out. This book is honest, relevant, messy, and something well worth reading. It doesn’t answer the question “who do you want to be,” but it sure makes you think about it.

Fatima is a prized concubine to the last sultan to rule Spain in the late 1400s. Born in the beautiful Alhambra palace, Fatima has never known freedom. She’s treated well, or as well as a bondswoman can be, but chafes at the injustice and inequality of being both a woman AND a slave. Her best friend is Hassan, the sultan’s mapmaker, who has a magical ability to map places he’s never seen and create rooms and passages out of thin air by drawing a map of them. When the defeated sultan surrenders the palace to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, they brand Hassan a sorcerer and demand he be turned over to the Inquisition. Fatima and Hassan flee the palace together, and with the help of a capricious jinni, embark on a dangerous journey to freedom.

If you’re a fan of lush, evocative writing, and magical realism, then this book is for you. With a slow, dreamy pace, it transports you to 15th century Spain. Fatima is fierce, bloody heroine who is willing to sacrifice everything for those she loves, and Hassan is the gay BFF you’ve always wanted. Throw in some horny jinnis, not-so-celibate monks, and a charming yet evil lady Inquisitor, and you have a heck of story. And that’s before you even get to the mythical, disappearing island.

Lady Clara left London in disgrace after ending her engagement to a Viscount under scandalous circumstances. When her brother’s neighbor, Hunt hears of her predicament he asks her to marry him. Does it matter that he thinks she’s the key to breaking a centuries-long curse on his family? Probably, but they’ll both lie to each other about it.

Sometimes you just need a good historical romance with a rebellious lady and the Scottish Laird she marries under false pretenses. No, I’m not talking about Outlander, but This Scot of Mine also brings all of the heat and fun of that other beloved novel.

Henry sells liquor from the still in the yard, just for now. He longs to leave East Texas and join the military but it never seems to be the right time to leave his loving mother alone with her increasingly fanatical second husband. The family routine is suddenly disrupted when a strange young woman stumbles out of the woods and into their lives. Discovering the secrets she carries puts a family at risk in ways they never imagined.

As the choices Henry makes cause his world to crumble, the lies pile up and the danger creeps closer until a desperate final attempt to redeem the woman he loves reveals just how damaged she is. At times hopeful and heartbreaking, one family’s journey tests the strength of love.