Thank you, HarperCollins Canada for a copy of this book!

The Queen’s Secret is told from the point of view of Queen Elizabeth (QE2’s mum) as Britain struggled through the Blitz. That alone makes this story quite intriguing – when have we ever had fiction that focuses on the Queen Mum? And this particular story is a doozy.

The story seems to be based on a tell-all unauthorized biography that came out in 2012. So, I would take it all with a grain of salt. It still makes a great story though. If you want all of the salacious details… you’re going to have to read this book. 

A lot of the narrative is the Queen’s inner thoughts – a format that I really enjoy if done well. Harper definitely pulled it off in this case. However, the pacing was a bit uneven at times. The story starts with her as an old woman before it jumps back to WW2. Normally when a book does this I expect the end of the book to be a jump forward to the time period the story started with. But in this case that didn’t happen, so the ending felt a bit abrupt. I don’t really think that takes much away from the story though. Overall I’d say this is an interesting and engaging read. 

I‘m not surprised that I loved this book – it is Nnedi Okorafor after all. 

She has taken a story about racism and immigration and placed it in a world where aliens… are actual outer space aliens immigrating to earth. It reminds me a bit of Binti – and I think you guys know by now how much I loved that story. It was recently nominated for an Eisner award – well deserved!

Every Canadian needs to read this. Cole documents his fight against racial inequality over the course of a year (2017). Much of it occurs in Toronto. He focuses on the Black community but also writes about the systemic racism faced by First Nations and immigrants. I thought I was pretty aware of our problems in this country - I was so wrong. It’s worse than you think. We need to change.