Novel Of The Week: Rome (Marked Men #3) by Jay Crownover

One thing I should have learned by now is to read the novel's plot!; by doing that I would have known this is the THIRD book of the 'Marked Men' series and I would have spared myself not understanding the characters relationships for the first 20 pages.
Besides this, here my reviews and thoughts on Rome by Jay CrownoverEnjoy!
Cora "Tinker Bell" Lewis is a living contrast: with her bicolor eyes and body covered with tattoos and piercing, she looks like a punk fairy...thing she stops being the moment she starts talking. Harsh and not afraid to speak her mind, Cora works in a tattoo shop with a few of her closest friends, waiting for the perfect guy, because of one thing she's absolutely sure: she won't repeat the mistake of trusting someone who doesn't deserve her love ever again.

Rome Archer served in the army for so long he doesn't remember how to be just a son or a brother anymore. He loved being a soldier and now that he has been dismissed he feels purposeless, with nightmares so vivid to wake him up screaming in the middle of the night and the only way he seems to deal with them is drinking to faint.

These two met at Rule (Rome's younger brother) and Shaw's house and they don't have the best start. Rome is in a bad mood and Cora doesn't want him to spoil her friends' happiness.
Thanks to a bar fight and its owner, Rome gets a job and seems to be better, but his ghosts are deeper than he thought...willing or not, Cora will help and take Rome home after he spent a night drinking and this is going to be a new start for both of them.

What I liked
I like who the author managed to cross the leading protagonists' story with their friends and families. I could barely stop reading, the story is so captivating, the characters are so well described and I don't even start to talk about the hot scenes! Rome's humor and feeling are heart-melting, but what I liked most is how he let someone else take care of him when it was him who was supposed to. How he struggled with his PTSD and Survivor Syndrome made me sympathize with him.

What I did not like
There's nothing I didn't like in this novel: yes, maybe sometimes both Rome's weakness for alcohol and Cora's reticence to love again made me want to strangle them and I find that everybody is holding on to anger for too long, but I haven't read the previous two books of the series, so I could not say whether they were right or wrong.


Besides the love story and the punk "Abercrombie & Fitch model's" appearance of the male characters, the protagonists are, in their own way, broken and lost. Somehow they find the strength, more or less consciously, of going on and help each other. I really liked this novel and I would recommend it to anyone! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series!

My Vote: 8
½ /10

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