Love in a Carry-On Bag

Back in August, I attended the National Book Club Conference for the first time. Getting to meet a lot of authors that I've read and admired for a long time was a wonderful experience. I also got to meet new authors that I have come to love such as Sadeqa Johnson. I just finished reading her debut novel Love in a Carry-On.

It's a story about a couple struggling to keep their steamy long distance relationship alive. Just when Erica thinks that she can stop spending her Friday evenings traveling from New York to D.C. to see her musician boyfriend Warren every weekend, he gets a year extension on his contract. He really loves Erica, but a man has to make a living doesn't he? Even if he has a short skirt wearing co-worker sabotaging ever move he makes. But Erica has her own issues at work trying to climb up the ladder to success to tend to.

In the midst of all the traveling, long distance calling, and working there are issues with their parents. Erica's needy mother comes up with every excuse in the book to borrow money from her. This is causing an enormous sense of resentment from Erica because she knows what her mother really uses the money for. That's what drove her father away when she was young and she hasn't spoken with him since. Warren probably wishes that his overbearing father would stop speaking to him. Instead he keeps dropping bombshell after bombshell causing Warren to wonder if everything his parents told him when he was growing up was a lie. 

Love in a Carry-On Bag was a great read. Hopefully Sadeqa's next novel Second House from the Corner comes out soon.

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