The Rome of Fall

Yet another incredibly entertaining novel by Chad Allen Gibbs. Alternating between 1994 and 2017, Marcus Brinks, the main character narrates his own story from the starts of his senior year in high school to his current day situation: teaching English at the very same high school in his early forties. Even though he spent just a brief four months at Rome High School, they were quite eventful. RHS is known for football. The school revolves around it and everyone lives for the football game and a state championship. Marcus does not share the same love but gets roped into many football related activities because he falls for the quarterback's girlfriend with just one glimpse of her. She is quite charming but also pretty unobtainable, as Marcus is lead to believe. Marcus settles into his senior year in Rome with his two new friends Jackson and Silas and gets involved in some unbelievable hijinks related to Becca, his now true love, and several football team members. In the current day, Marcus is a has-been rock star who had one famous album back in his twenties but then had a mental breakdown and then finally got it together, and went back to Rome to teach because his mom has cancer. His present is not unlike his past, involving the football team members from his stint at Rome in the 1990's, his two friends (one of them now an bigger than life football coaching ex-friend) and the love of his life (still) now single Becca. The ending definitely surprised me! This story is a little involved and definitely needs to be read with attention to detail but well worth it for the amazingly unique & funny characters and distinctive plotline! Well worth your time! Do not this miss this hilarious foray into the underground world of high school football! Thanks so much to the author Mr. Gibbs himself and to NG for the ARC's!!!

Chad Gibbs dose it again, i read Two like me and you last year and loved that one, and i really like this one too!
This book was very unique, and i kind of had a love-hate relationship with the MC Marcus Brinks. Because sometimes he was so annoying , having his head stuck up his ass or so sort-of in love i wanted to just shake him, but he had his moments when his character devoloped nicely over the years in the book, wich made me like him more and more. Somethings changes and somethings stays the same... is the feel i get form this book!

Line one of chapter one reads, "Dude, you like Weezer?" And with that, I was hooked. Just like the description says, this book is a blend of Friday Night Lights, Julius Caesar and 90s nostalgia. Three things that maybe shouldn't work when combined, but actually go together brilliantly.

We know that the main character, Marcus Brinks, spent his early 20s as the lead singer of an indie rock band called Dear Brutus. What is a genius move is that each chapter alternates between 1994 and 2017 so we're only reading about his time before and after his brush with fame. The only glimpses we get at what happened while in the band and why they broke up are in excerpts of articles from magazines like SPIN, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Wikipedia. It was just enough, but also made me want to read more about the band, the excerpts were so well-written and believable. And much like Daisy Jones & The Six, I wanted to listen to Dear Brutus' Beige Album while reading this.

I loved this book. I sat down to start reading it just to get a sense of what it was like and all the sudden I was halfway through. Not only is it just great storytelling, it had me laughing out loud multiple times. Marcus' dry sense of humor is so likable and there's a skim-and-you'll-miss-it reference to The Fugitive that is *chef's kiss* perfection.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This will be available on March 15th.

GOAL!!!! Chad Alan Gibbs majorly scored in this nostalgia-inducing book, that is an excellent follow-up to the delightful Two Like Me and You (you can read my review of that book here). This book effortlessly alternated between funny and heartwarming.

The plot of the book is fairly simple. Marcus Brinks moves to a tiny town during his senior year. He quickly discovers a few things: there’s not too much to do on a Saturday night, the entire town is way too obsessed with high school football, and the girl of his dreams is dating the star quarterback. Of course, the quarterback is a huge jerk (is there a reason this trope is so common?), which Marcus and his buddies cite as their reason to take him down.

This tale unfolds partially in 1994, during Marcus’ senior year, and partially in 2017 when Marcus, now a has-been rockstar, moves back to said small town only to discover that: the town is still overly obsessed with football, and most of the main players from high school still live there. This includes the one. As Marcus settles back in, he realizes that there’s a football-field sized bundle of messed-up going on. From there, things go in some unexpected directions.

The great thing about this book is that, while the general storyline isn’t all that new, the characters are likable and easy to relate to. Silas, Marcus’ rap lyrics-spouting friend, made me smile. I’m pretty sure I knew that kid in high school. Then there was Jackson, who was third-string on the ridiculously huge football team. And of course, Deacon, the quarterback a-hole. If left alone, these characters could easily have been paper cutouts of every 90’s teen movie, but instead Gibbs infused them with humor and originality.

At times I felt sorry for Marcus, and at other times I really wanted to yell, “DUDE! Open your eyes!,” so obviously I became very invested in this book. While ostensibly a cute little romance, this book is much more than that. In fact, the romantic aspect ends up being less important than pretty much everything else, which I love. It’s a catalyst for everything after.

I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it was perfect. If the book had ended any other way, I would have been very disappointed, but I shouldn’t have worried. Chad Alan Gibbs is an excellent writer, and I hope he has many more books up his sleeve.

Now, I’m off to listen to Weezer and happily sink in the 90’s nostalgia that this highly entertaining book inspired.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC! Books that switch back and forth between past and present either work well or flop. This one worked well. While it builds back story, you are suspicious of people in the present bc of what you see in a previous chapter. It also makes you want to keep reading bc a past or present section leaves you hanging. I enjoyed that it went from the 90s of my own high school days to 2017 (& I’m a teacher, so I had that connection as well).
The main character, former rock star Marcus, had some childish tendencies (seemed rock star-like in that way), but that childishness and his past of being in a band with one big hit record make him an interesting addition to the teaching faculty at a football-obsessed high school he briefly attended, I liked seeing what his friends and enemies and HS love were all like in the past compared to him seeing them again in his 40s. It was also interesting to see how football rules the adults and kids. I loved the character of his mom, and the dialogue was witty. There’s interesting conflict, and right when I found myself getting irritated with him, he stepped up and impressed me.
I read this one pretty quickly as it had me interested and was pretty fast-paced. I think it would appeal to YA and adult readers alike.
Just FYI-contains hefty profanity and references to sex, drugs, and underage drinking

Hits all the right notes, all the inside jokes, all the nostalgia of the 1990s.

I was gripped by The Rome of Fall for a quick day and a half. Told in two threads, thirty years apart, in the life of Marcus Brinks, high school senior/ washed up rock star…

1994: Marcus is forced to move to his mom’s hometown of Rome, Alabama, and enrolls in football crazy Rome High School. He’s resigned to stew on his new-kid and son-of-newly-divorced-parents status, but he hooks up with an eclectic crew. Jackson, the backup to the backup QB and Silas, a former athlete who is now suffering from muscular dystrophy. They spend their weekends cruising Main Street, playing NBA Jam, and sometimes going to church youth group (for the girls). Oh, and let’s not forget The Crush. Becca, the starting QB’s GF.

2017: Marcus has returned to Rome after twenty-three years. A meteoric rise to rock star fame… and then a decade and a half as a recluse in Jamaica. But Marcus has now taken a job as an English teacher at his old high school. His relationship with his mother has been a series of ups and downs (even a number of years of silence), but now that her illness has taken a turn for the worse he has moved back in to take care of her. Some things in Rome have stayed the same (football, small-town gossip, Becca is SINGLE!).

I have no idea how Gibbs remembered all the mid-90s sayings, references, and music, but it came flooding back to me in a heartbeat. This book got me… Ummm, I graduated high school in 94 and I’ve been a high school English teacher for the past 21 years. Some of the most interesting juxtaposition in the book is the difference in technology. The pre-cell phone era vs the social media world we live in now. My high school Friday nights revolved around a lot of HORSE games and playing Madden-NFL on Sega. And now as a a teacher, I experience the distractions head on every day. Gibbs gets this perfectly in his novel.

And the plot: both threads build slowly and at the end there an equally shattering climax that is just awesome. It’s great… and not to downplay it at all, but it’s the atmosphere that got me and kept me going. The references to Weezer, “sad bastardness,” and the trying to discuss Shakespeare with 9th graders. (I just taught Romeo and Juliet last month.)

Pick this up for lots of laughs, some bitter-sweet symphony feels, and a heavy dose of one guy with a guitar, a notebook, and that one girl.

5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to the author for an advanced copy for review.

In a unique take on 'what goes around comes around', this book examines the ways that decisions made in high school come back to haunt us as adults. Equal parts funny and infuriating, the main characters approach to dealing with conflict is all of us struggling to take adulting head on.

Thanks the author for reaching out and Netgallery for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest opinion. The book will be available on 15th March 2020.

This is the second book I have read by Chad Alan Gibbs. As much as i liked his first novel (Two Like You and Me), this book give a different vibe. The scene set in school life and adulthood which at first i thought it will be difficult to catch up on the story but turns out it's pretty clear cut. The alternate between year 1994 and 2017 shows how the main character (Marcus Brinks) grows in terms of maturity and characteristic as well as other characters.

Also i really enjoy the humor in the story and bring laughter in every chapter. I can imagine this play out as movie which might be a great work. Once again great work Chad and look forward for more great books from you.

So let me first say that I graduated high school in 93, and currently live an a small town where my son plays football, although we aren't nearly as obsessed with it as Rome is. I think that some of my warm fuzzy feeling for this book is due to nostalgia and self recognition. I did like the book, and the characters, and most especially the writing, but I didn't love the story. It's slow and predictable. But I did love Marcus, and the back and forth between past and present really worked, especially seeing him (and the others) grow and change (or remain stagnant). This book was funny yet real, but it left me wanting just a bit more.
3.5 Stars

5 stars! I absolutely adored this book! Everything about it was perfect. The writing, the story, the characters. Perfection!

Let me start with the writing - Gibbs’ writing is so ridiculously entertaining and so sassy (the main character is basically a 40 year old Percy Jackson who teaches high school literature minus the demigod powers). And let’s talk for a second about the end of this book (like the literal last page) - it was freaking explosive (kind of literally, actually). It had me like Ron Burgandy in Anchorman, all “well-that-escalated-quickly.”

Then there’s the story itself, which alternates between the past (set in the 90’s) and present day. Both storylines were really entertaining and well-done, and I found myself really caring about what was happening in both. It was interesting to see how the things that happened in the past informed the events of the present-day story line. The more we learned about the characters in the past, the more we understand about what’s happening (and going to happen) in the present.

Overall, just fantastic! Two awesome books in a row (the first being Two Like Me and You). Chad Alan Gibbs has joined the ranks of my auto-read authors, no question about it.

As someone who graduated from high school during the 1990s, this book resonated with me a lot. At the same time, I think I could give it to my children and they would also relate. I will definitely be purchasing this for my library and I'm considering suggesting it for our book club. Fun book, fun reading. Chad Gibbs is definitely on our must buy list!