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Love Changes by Eartha Watts Hicks
on February 4, 2015
Pages: 380 pages
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Ten years in the making, the debut novel by Eartha Watts Hicks infuses original poetry, song lyrics from 80's and 90s popular music, and prose in the narrative of Mia Love, a twenty-six year old single mother. Mia Love quits college to support her live-in boyfriend, Spider. When she becomes pregnant, her mother, his mother, and Romell, her handsome and flirtatious best friend, all think she has made a bad decision. Now, Mia cares for both her newborn son and Spider. Tethered to a low wage job to pay the bills, she's urging him make a commitment. Spider, himself underemployed, remains resistant. This causes tension between the two, with arguments getting more and more personal. Meanwhile, "good friend" Romell is offering a shoulder (and a lot more) to lean on. What ensues is a love triangle with a unique twist, two men vying for a lady with a baby.
This heartwarming story of a young woman's struggle to remain true to herself was edited by Grace F. Edwards. Love Changes received the 2013 "Literary Game Changers" award in the fiction category from the NYCHA branch of the NAACP and was selected as The New York Amsterdam News's recommended summer read for 2013. Eartha Watts Hicks was a featured panelist at the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus.
Mia Love is in love with Spider, her boyfriend of 10 years whom she has built a life around along with baby Te-Bo, leaving behind her dreams of graduating from college since she dropped out three years ago to work and support Spider.
Mia has a best friend named Romell who Spider doesn’t care for, but Romell has been in her life “since she was born” Mia says and is not going anywhere.
Mia spends much of the story trying to figure out if and when Spider will marry her when she is not getting on Romell about his choices in women.
We are voyeurs into the world of these people and for me, it was very slow pacing and not a page turner. I did, however, find a few scenes Mia had with Spider’s mother funny and that made up for the lack of “excitement”.
I did understand what Ms. Hicks was trying to do with the story because it truly is about love, choices and decisions you make that impact people in your life, but I never connected with the characters to make me care about them. Not a bad first outing and I’m sure we will be reading more works from Ms. Hicks in the future.
Reviewed by: Linda
