Time Fixers (Miles in Time Book 2) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; Time Travel YA Continues with a Timeless Volume

 Time Fixers (Miles in Time Book 2) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; Time Travel YA Continues with a Timeless Volume 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Well The Hardy Boys are at it again. No, not those Hardy Boys. Simon and Miles Hardy, the time traveling brothers from Lee Matthew Goldberg’s 2-Part YA Science Fiction Time Travel series. The first volume, Miles in Time, involved the adventurous detective Miles going back in time to prevent his scientific technogeek older brother, Simon from being murdered by unidentified assailants. He saved his brother but made a mortal enemy in Omni, the secret sinister organization that put the initial target on Simon’s back. 

The second volume, Time Fixers is a stronger, more personal, and also more focused adventure that raises the conflicts. This time Simon is able to improve his time travel device to travel beyond the previous week. Instead it can send the traveler back to 1999. For the brothers, that means one important thing. In the present, their mentally ill mother is institutionalized. They can go back to when she was in high school and resolve the family trauma that led to her years of addiction and mental illness. The brothers are not alone. Miles told his girlfriend, Maisie about the previous time traveling adventures. She comes with, hoping to resolve a family conflict of her own with her missing mother. The trio become embroiled in not only their own family histories but the origins of Omni whose members might be all too familiar to them.

In the first book, the focus was on adventure with some family drama thrown in. This one reverses that by devoting more time on the family drama and minimizing the adventure but still making it an important part.

There is deep trauma that is explored particularly with Miles and Simon's mother, Patty. When they left her, she was addicted to pills, spoke in monosyllables and non sequiturs, and committed self-harm. The years of being broken and non-functional took their toll. She is lost to her family in the present so the brothers want to change her past.

Once they see Patty's family, Simon and Miles understand their mother more. Before they pitied and cared for her. Miles in particular often nursed her when his father, Kip could not. However, as much as they missed the loving and involved woman that she briefly was when they were small, she is now a remote cypher to them. They can't break through her precarious vulnerable exterior and have given up trying to communicate with her. She is less a mother to them and more of an object of pity, concern, and frustration.

In the past, they see their mother as a feisty multifaceted emotional girl who is hurt at home and trying different means to detach herself from that hurt. The brothers focus on the causes of what made their mother turn out the way that she did rather than the effects of what it created. Patty is a person who had her life ahead of her and could have lived it openly and creatively with plenty of love, acceptance, and support but was stopped by  abusive and narcissistic parents. The boys have to rescue their mother not only from her toxic home but from herself and the woman that she turns into.

Patty isn't the only person that the boys and Maisie try to help. They try to prevent a tragedy in Kip’s young life that left him withdrawn and falling into self-isolation. Maisie also recognizes her parents' struggles and insecurities so she doesn't end up alone. The teens are given insights into their parents as people, kids like them who were uncertain, confused, awkward, idealistic, intelligent, rebellious, immature, curious, surly, argumentative, cynical, and ready to challenge the world that their kids would later inherit. They are going through the same struggles about identity, acceptance, and belonging that their children are going through in the 2020’s.

There are  other aspects of the book that shine. There are  humorous moments when Simon, Miles, and Maisie go to the past and gape at the weird fashions, old fashioned technology, and the music. There are also clever references about the time period that border on nostalgic.

The adventure also goes through some fascinating twists, climaxes, and resolutions. The trio are stalked by enemies that use a variety of means like threats, manipulation, and feigning friendship to find their technology, divide, and destroy them.

It's also interesting to see Omni in its earlier form as a small organization with few employees but nefarious goals before its 2020's incarnation as a widespread conspiracy with various members, outlets, and schemes. We also see how the agents got involved with this organization, why they joined, and why they stayed when conscience should have told them otherwise. Similar to their parents, the kids see their adversaries as people who had reasons for what they did and could have lived different lives. Instead they chose a path that led to financial gain, corruption, violence and self-destruction.

Time Fixers is a brilliant book about how choice and trauma shaped our past and created our present. It also happens to be a great thrilling adventure to spend time with. 

Surviving Gen X by Jo Szewczyk; Bizarre, Confusing, and Witty Mish-Mash of Getting Laid and Finding Love in 1990’s Las Vegas

 Surviving Gen X by Jo Szewczyk; Bizarre, Confusing, and Witty Mish-Mash of Getting Laid and Finding Love in 1990’s Las Vegas

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It wouldn't surprise me if Jo Szewczyk’s Surviving Gen X existed in the same universe as Richard R. Becker’s Third Wheel. It almost could be a stealth sequel. Third Wheel was a seriocomic Crime Thriller about a geeky but troubled kid in 80’s Las Vegas encountering a bevy of eccentric criminals in an attempt to stave off boredom and get rich. Surviving Gen X is a seriocomic Literary Fiction about a disaffected 20 something in 90’s Las Vegas encountering a bevy of eccentric friends, acquaintances, and lovers in an attempt to stave off loneliness and get laid. Between the two books, there appears to be a natural progression of age and experience that develops within the protagonists the more they venture into Sin City at various points in their lives.

Surviving Gen X doesn’t have much in the way of plot. It focuses on an unnamed Narrator who goes from one misadventure to another. He encounters little people, runaway Mormons, glam rock tribute bands, persistent exes, violent crooks,gamblers, apartment crashers who never leave, bartenders with suspect mob ties. BDSM club goers, homicidal religious types, addicts, prostitutes, and many other colorful locals and tourists that Las Vegas has to offer. 

The book bounces around in an excitable stream of conscious manner which is less concerned with what happens than how these incidents are seen through the Narrator’s eyes. He is a sarcastic jaded character who is filled with dry one liners. (At a costume party someone mistakes his Willy Wonka costume for Prince. He sarcastically tells the Reader, “My name is not Prince and I am not funky.”) He observes everything with a wry detachment that alternates between bemused excitement and world weariness at the shenanigans in which he falls into. 

The Narrator isn’t exactly the warmest of souls. He is quite often shallow and careless in his feelings towards others particularly in his romantic relationships. He cares more about getting some than getting into a relationship. When he finds someone that he actually does care about, he pursues her behaving like a stalker instead of someone who is truly considerate about what she wants and how he is making life difficult for her. 

Nonetheless, he does show genuine understanding and concern towards others. After a very weird night, he meets Gene, a French little person. The two bond while they are in jail and escape together. The two become friends united in their pursuit of women and potential happiness. The Narrator and Gene assist each other in their romantic troubles and usually find themselves in various hapless situations but emerge with their friendship intact.

The Narrator also has a potentially developing relationship with Annie, an unhappily married Mormon woman. His pursuit of her is problematic but it is born out of genuine concern especially when he encounters her abusive religious husband. There is a genuine concern for her welfare and even if the Narrator is not always wise in his gestures towards her, he does care about her beyond a one night stand. The Narrator’s relationships with Gene and Annie veer towards heart in a novel that is more concerned with showing the surface of life in Las Vegas and little of the substance.

Actually the most important character is not Gene, Annie, or even the Narrator. It is Las Vegas itself. It is shown in all of its facets. There are various chapters like one set at the Fetish and Fantasy Ball, an elaborate masquerade in which one's darkest sexual desires are filled, which show the city in all of its licentious weirdness. It is seen as vibrant, loud, obnoxious, intoxicating, iconoclastic, lascivious, tacky, exciting, and hypnotic. It is the type of city where it’s easy to find a good time but not easy to find a peace of mind.

That’s what the setting does to the characters. They are aware of the shallowness and fall into it. They can’t find anything meaningful so they drink, party, have sex, and live for the moment. It is not the cry of free spirits. It is the cry of desperate souls who are drowning in the ennui of their excitement. They have given up on looking for any meaning. They just want to have a good time even when they are sick of it. 

That’s what the Narrator wants to find: some meaning in his life. Something beyond the surface shallow world that surrounds him. But finding unhappiness in his pursuits causes him to withdraw even more into that shallowness. Ironically the title is called Surviving Gen X because that’s all that he is doing. He is surviving, but not growing, developing, or really living.

New Book Alert: Something for Bebe by Neil A. White; Intricate Suspenseful Thriller About War Crimes and Revenge During and After The Bosnian War

 New Book Alert: Something for Bebe by Neil A. White; Intricate Suspenseful Thriller About War Crimes and Revenge During and After The Bosnian War

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Bosnian War was a conflict that lasted from 1992-1995 and involved the countries of former Yugoslavia. After the Eastern bloc collapsed, various ethnic groups such as the Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) warred against each other in the country now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ethnic cleansing occurred as Bosniaks and Bosnians Croats were forced to flee their homes or were exiled by the Army of the Republika and Serb paramilitaries. Methods included killing of civilians, rape, torture, destruction of civilian, public and cultural property, looting and pillaging, and relocations of various populations. Between 700,000 and 1,000,000 Bosniaks were removed from their homes by Serbian forces. Several people including Serbian politicians, soldiers, and officials were eventually tried by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As with many violent conflicts, Bosnia and Herzegovina is still trying to recover from those terrible days.

The Bosnian War is the backdrop for Something for Bebe by Neil A. White, an intricate and suspenseful thriller about long awaited revenge during and after the Bosnian War. It tells the story of an American journalist who vows to destroy the men who ruined his wife and her family's lives.

Veteran widowed journalist, Elliot Kruger is dying and he has something important to do before he shuffles off this mortal coil. He mails one note to four different men telling them that they may not know him but he knows them, that he is their conscience, and that he is coming for them. He then sends some information to Madison "Maddy" Holt, his young fellow journalist and protegee to research the story on what he is planning to do. Finally, he travels to former Yugoslavia to see justice done up close and personal with Maddy, the CIA, Serbian forces, and other interested and violent parties close behind.

Something for Bebe is a novel that is a thrilling chase and an engaging mystery rolled into one. Maddy and her friend, Grant Stanhope, travel to the former Yugoslavia to piece together the various questions of Elliot's past and why he traveled such a long distance to see justice done. They are constantly aware that they are being monitored and are chased out of hotel rooms by suspicious characters. Many characters are killed in graphic ways. One in particular is found in a men's room with entrails, blood, and organs around him, a sign that not only someone wanted this character dead but to suffer before their death. 

Calls and messages to Grant's mother, who works for the State Department, reveal that this case has higher stakes than Elliot's one man revenge. Many of the higher ups in Europe and the United States don't mind playing the people under them like chess pieces and it shows. There are also other characters whose motives are a complete surprise adding further twists to the storyline.

The highlight of the book are the chapters that are set in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past and present. As Elliot searches for his old enemies and Maddy and Grant search for Elliot, the Reader learns the story of Elliot's late wife, Berina "Bebe" Berberovic. The chapters reveal her as a Bosniak woman who was forced to watch as her neighbors were exiled, family members are killed or separated from her, and she is imprisoned. During her imprisonment, she is tortured and raped. It is a truly gripping and heartbreaking account of a woman being made to suffer because she is Muslim in a country that is violently prejudiced against them. Bebe's story is just one example of the many who suffered through those horrendous war years.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina described in the novel's present is still coming to terms with this violent past. Many of the characters that Maddy, Elliot, and Grant encounter have selective amnesia in not wanting to recall those days. They want to retain a small fraction of peace in which they were deprived from nearly 30 years ago. A whole generation has been born and matured since those days and only have ruined buildings and villages containing a smaller populace to tell them. This is a populace that will not and cannot remember those days.

Unfortunately, some of the perpetrators have gone unpunished. While some were made examples of during the tribunals, others escaped to other countries using pseudonyms. One of the more sadistic characters is arrogant enough to practically hide out in plain sight, still believing in his old prejudices and is willing to look for political allies to enable him to continue the work that he started during the War. He is a truly vile being and it is not a great loss in hoping that justice, in the form of Elliot, comes calling.

Something for Bebe is an exciting and heartbreaking account of war and revenge revealing that sometimes, retribution can wait but it does happen.

Weekly Reader: More Than Words by Christina Benjamin; '90's Indie Grunge Scene Steals The Show From The Budding Romance

 

Weekly Reader: More Than Words by Christina Benjamin; '90's Indie Grunge Scene Steals The Show From The Budding Romance

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Ah yes, I remember the '90's music well.

I was in Middle School when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out and in high school when Kurt Cobain died. I remember when the local St. Louis radio station 105.7 The Point played nothing but Alternative and Grunge music, except during lunch when they played Retro. I remember the groups and singers like Alice in Chains, Radiohead, Sound Garden, Jane's Addiction, Garbage, Tracey Bonham, Leah Andreoni, Candlebox, Butthole Surfers, Nerf Herder, Eve 6, and of course the granddaddies, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I remember the multigroup concerts like Lollapalooza, PointFest, Lilith Fair, Horde Fest, and many others. I envied those who went to PointFest. (Now with my overdeveloped crowd anxiety, I'm glad I never went.) High schoolers flocked to Vintage Vinyl, the St. Louis record store to listen to the music from their favorite bands.

The music was stripped down and sometimes acoustic. The lyrics expressed frustration,anger, depression, and emotions right out in the open that moved beyond romance and break ups. There was honesty in the music and those who promoted it. They expressed their love of the music by performing in clubs and with indie labels. Their fans spread that love through word of mouth and ezines, without corporate influence. (And this was before Social Media did the work for them, kids.)

 Admittedly, some groups did branch out and played on MTV and major record labels. How else could a bookworm geeky teenage girl who lived in Northern California and the Midwest at the time have heard of them? I wasn't exactly old enough to go to the clubs or savvy enough to hear them before they were well known. I admit that I found the term "sell out" to be frustrating for that reason. ("When does a group sell out," I always wondered, "When I like them? You're allowed to like them, but I'm not?")

However, now that I have gotten older and am actively involved in the indie book publishing scene, I understand that feeling that the indie music fans had at the time (and many still have). You want to be there right at the moment when it's fresh, exciting, and isn't bound by rules, restrictions, and packaging. You want to discover someone new and promote the heck out of them, because you love the work and the scene. 

You want nothing, but the best for the artists you love, the fame and money. But at the same time you hope that they don't change too much, that they don't forget the people that they were, and remain honest. You miss the original scene now that others have discovered it. In trying to be more welcoming, the indie scene lost what made it great in the first place: the honesty, the rawness, and exclusivity. 

As an artist, you want fame to be recognized, but not too much fame that it's overwhelming. You want to make enough money to live comfortably and to live off of your chosen profession, so you don't have to take another job. But you don't want to be too fabulously wealthy so that you can't control yourself or the parasites who hang about you because of your money. You want to appeal to a wider audience so your chosen art can reach others, but still want to maintain artistic integrity so you can continue to reach your original fanbase.

It is the indie Grunge scene of the early '90's that is the backdrop of More Than Words, Christina Benjamin's contemporary romance about a pair of college students who fall in love while exploring the Seattle Grunge scene. While the lead protagonists are compelling, it is the setting and time period that really make this book. It is just as much a love letter to the musical genre that many grew up with as it is a love story between two people.

It is the typical romance between opposites. Kristin is the daughter of lawyers who think that she will combine her love of music and attorney influenced background to study at the University of Washington to become an entertainment lawyer. What they don't know is that their daughter is spending her time away from classes and exploring the clubs to listen to Grunge music. To her credit, she isn't just going to hang out, listen to some great tunes, and become a groupie. 

Kristin has a real ear for music and knows how to promote, manage, and book local bands. Her greatest dream is to work for a major indie record label as a producer. Unfortunately, her dreams took a backslide when her boyfriend, Nuno, lead singer of the group Deafgraffiti, left Kristin's management and romantic attachment behind when he signed with a major label. He became famous and forgot all the people who helped him along the way, like ex-bandmates and Kristin.

Phinn is a student from rural Oregon, experiencing city life and its club scene for the first time. He is also a music fan and an aspiring musician himself. When Kristin is practically dragged to a frat party by her roommate, she encounters Phinn. The two bond over a mutual love of the band, Dominion and then agree to meet again at the Back Booth to hear Dominion play.

Kristin and Phinn are a couple that are developed just as much by their love of music as their interest in each other. They have different approaches to the art form that reflect their talents and differing personalities. Kristin is more hard core and introverted. She wants to be behind the scenes but at the same time reveal her dedication to her craft. She knows what's good and which bands deserve to have more recognition.

Phinn is more outgoing and open minded. He is a more welcoming personality that draws people in, even the more withdrawn Kristin. He is the perfect person to be in the center either playing or greeting people at a club. While he has a talent for playing music, his warmth and openness also could be displayed as a club owner or agent. Phinn is foreground while Kristin is background, but together they reveal their love of music. 

This book also shows that you don't have to be a performer yourself to express a love for a certain art. You can spot the perfect bands, manage a club, host featured acts, and that still makes you a part of that world than if you picked up a guitar and sang into a microphone.

Of course, Kristin is revealed in her network of musicians, clubs, and record labels. She recognizes talent when she sees it, like when she sees Candlebox and is ready to promote them.

While Phinn plays the guitar, he is also able to use his welcoming nature to make an abandoned frat house, which he and his friends live in, into a club that of course is perfect for Candlebox to perform. 

Take away the 1990's time period and the grunge music and the Candlebox subplot could almost be one of those old movie musicals, where the principal characters put on a show and fall in love while planning to make it big on Broadway or Hollywood.

All joking aside, the subplot is instrumental in revealing Kristin and Phinn's mutual love for music.Through that love, they begin to understand and develop a love for each other. One of the more telling conversations reveals that. Kristin tells Phinn how much she loves music and wants to have a career in it and nothing will stop her. What about love? Phinn asks. Would you give music up for love? Kristin's answer could be summarized as no, she loves music too much and if any guy really loved her, then he would understand. Luckily, Phinn is that guy.

The real star of this book is the indie club scene and it is extremely well written. From the club goers dressed in black clothing and boots, to the loud pulsing music, to the smell of pot and alcohol in the air, there is a sense of togetherness and cosmic energy as the bands and club goers are there to play and hear the music in its raw and real form.

Real bands, like the aforementioned Candlebox exist alongside fictional ones, like Deafgrafitti to give More Than Words a real sense of authenticity. These are characters who try to live a life free of establishment and corporate rules (such as going to Cafe Allegra rather than the already growing Starbucks). But there is also the growing anxiety that this is only a moment and things will pass. Kristin sees the growing attendance at the clubs including the trendy college kids and worries. She fears that someday her world will be sanitized and packaged into something clean and safe. In their drive to welcome larger crowds, execs, record labels, and owners will change it with rules, standards, image over substance and she won't recognize it. The only thing that Kristin and Phinn can do is enjoy the indie music world while it lasts and make sure that in the future, they can use their careers to create something authentic that lasts beyond the moment and the changes. Their influence in the indie music genre will help the music keep to its roots.

The title, More Than Words, comes from a line in which Kristin reveals that she loves music "more than words." Of course the fact that it is also the name of the 1990 acoustic love song by Extreme, which extols using more creative means to express love rather than just using the words "I love you,"  perhaps gives it a double meaning. (Also the fact that the band members of Extreme themselves said that the song was "a blessing and a curse." It was so different from their usual style, that they alienated their old fans and offended new fans who were drawn to that specific song when they refused to play it. This echoes into the book's theme about the struggle between being authentic and changing oneself to attract a larger audience.) 

This is more than a book about love between two people. This is about a love of music and other art forms. It is about using one's talents to give artists and other talented people a gift. The gifts represent the gratitude for all of the time spent being enraptured by that art. It is about finding the right career path that allows you to engage in and express that love in ways that are important to you and the artists. It is how one's first love isn't always necessarily a person. Sometimes it's an art form whether it's books, photography, painting, sculpture, comics, films, or music.

And if you find someone along the way who also shares that love and wants to develop that artform with you and you fall in love with each other as well, then that's all the better.

Weekly Reader: The Rome of Fall by Chad Alan Gibbs; Biting Novel About Small Town Life, School Days, '90's Nostalgia, and Memories Good and Bad

Weekly Reader: The Rome of Fall by Chad Alan Gibbs; Biting Novel About Small Town Life, School Days, '90's Nostalgia, and Memories Good and Bad

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book that features social media 

Spoilers: This is a book that fills me with so many memories, that it almost scares me. I went to a rural high school and graduated in the '90's (Grandview R-II, Ware, Missouri, Class of '96.) So I remember so much of it, the Friday night football games especially Homecoming, the pre-social media age of card catalogs, AOL, and chat rooms, X Files on Friday then Sunday nights, and Alternative and Grunge music from the greats like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Garbage, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, and many others. Chad Alan Gibbs' The Rome of Fall reopens those days so well, that he makes me wonder if he had a camera installed at my high school at the time, just so he could take notes for a future novel. (Or more than likely remembered his own high school years, which is the more logical theory.)

Marcus Brinks is a new kid at Rome High School in Rome, Alabama in 1994. He loves Alternative music and wants to front his own band but right now he's an outcast new kid who is bullied, particularly by quarterback, Deacon Cassburn. He goes through the typical teen hijinks such as making friends with fellow outcast, Jackson Crowder with whom he shares a mutual love of Weezer and his crush on pretty girl, Becca Walsh.

Rome is a school that takes its football team seriously. Very seriously. Pep rallies are scheduled every Friday afternoon and the football games are packed every night. The students go to the games and meet for pizza afterwards. It's a time honored tradition that everyone partakes. Even those with no athletic abilities or interest, like Marcus, engage in the social activities of attending the games and get caught up in the whole "us vs. them" mentality. Why Marcus even has a Friday Night Girlfriend in Becca. (Her real boyfriend is Deacon, but since he plays football, she needs someone to accompany her to games or take her out when he goes to the away games.)

If you didn't live in a rural school, or any school which was practically dependant on its athletic teams, and weren't interested in sports and had other options on Fridays, then you probably don't understand what football season is like in high school. The Rome of Fall is not exaggerating. If anything, it understates how big it is to some schools.

 It's easy to get excited during those Fridays during the pep rallies when cheerleaders lead spectators in cheering on the team as well as your class (Seniors usually got the biggest cheers). Even the most non-athletic students (such as this one who was a shy socially awkward bookworm with very few friends) could get swept up in the excitement and belonging. It didn't matter if the team won or lost. (My years, they got as far as district my freshman year then suffered a tremendous losing streak afterwards.) You were there in your school colors (ours were black and gold), created posters and mascot designs for spirit week (Grandview Eagles), and used those days as a time to socialize, have fun, and act as a unit. In rural schools with little options of alternate things to do on a Friday night, football games could often be the highlight of the week. Gibbs conveys that milieu rather well.

After graduating high school, Marcus becomes the lead singer of an indie rock band, Dear Brutus. They manage to release one album called The Beige Album, reportedly inspired by Markus' relationship with an ex-girlfriend and Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal novel, The Giver (more '90's Nostalgia. Who didn't read that in school or repeatedly see it advertised in book order forms or Scholastic Book Fairs?) The Beige Album sold 500,000 copies, certified gold, and received unanimous praise from critics. The group received instantaneous success until Marcus walked off stage during a concert in 1999 and the group disbanded. Marcus then spent some time in the Caribbean in isolation and solitude.

While the musical trajectory of Dear Brutus is traditional, almost cliched with the instant success, internal problems, and break up, it adds to the nostalgia for those of us who remember the music of the 1990's. Songs as varied as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Pearl Jam's "Even Flow," Sound Garden's  "Black Hole Sun," Alice in Chain's "Man in the Box," Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)", Melissa Etheridge's "Come To My Window," Jewel's "Who Will Save Your Souls?", Sheryl Crow's "All I Want To Do," Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway," Blind Melon's "No Rain," Faith No More's "Epic," Green Day's "Basket Case",  and Smashing Pumpkins' "Vampire" and many many others were the soundtracks of many of our teen years. Chances are if the music was stripped down, the vocals were either mournful and melancholy or screaming and angry, the lyrics brutally honest, and the performers were upfront about their personal problems and sneered at corporate commercialism while at the same time welcomed it, then by all the Gods and Goddesses, it was our music. 

That's how Gibbs writes Dear Brutus, a sometimes satirical but an affectionate tribute to the music of the 1990's. The Readers nod in recognition comparing the fictional Dear Brutus with many of their own favorite real life favorite groups and singers.

The Rome of Fall alternates between Marcus' past as a high school student and as a rock musician and his present as he returns to 2017 Rome. Unemployed, caring for his ailing mother, and almost 20 years removed from his rock star fame, he accepts a position as an English teacher at Rome High School. While some believe that you can't go home again, that doesn't really apply when those you knew never left.

His old rival Deacon is part of the Quarterback Club. His former girlfriend, Becca Walsh teaches sixth grade. The biggest change is in his former best friend, Jackson. Once a fellow rock fan and social misfit, Jackson is a coach, town hero, and practically owns Rome. He has also transforned into a complete jerk who hides a sleazy, cheating, illegal nature underneath a "God-and-Country-Family-Values" community leader image.

 Those who would find it unrealistic that so many of Marcus' old high school acquaintances still live in town should check their former classmates' social media accounts and realize that true to life, many of them do stick around where they grew up and went to school.

Returning to Rome forces Marcus to confront his past. He can't hide from his former rock fame when his students have access to Wikipedia, Spotify, and other social media apps and waste plenty of class time reminding him of it. He also can't hide from terrible things that he did in high school, one that changed the trajectory of his, Deacon's, and Jackson's lives forever. 

He also has to confront the reality of his relationships with those he knew and wonder if he really knew them at all. Was Becca the sweet lost muse of his imagination and lyrics or was she just using Marcus and is continuing to use him? Did Jackson change and get a swelled head over the years or was he always a jerk and Marcus just didn't notice? Marcus' past is colored through rose tinted reminisces about the good old days, until they bleeds over into the present and he has to see them as they really were.

 In the present  Marcus finds himself caught between his former friend and rival, discovering that some resentments haven't changed and some emotions have only gotten stronger as he and those around him have gotten older. Once he faces the lives of those in the present, is he able to confront his past and come forward about things that he did and in which he turned a blind eye.

The Rome of Fall is the type of book that on the surface brims with nostalgia. However, it also forces us to look at those old days with a more critical eye, what really happened, how we behaved, and the troubles we faced. We will see that we did horrible things, that times were hard, that life wasn't perfect. We may still like the music, or watch the movies. We may even still go to the local football games, but that doesn't mean that life was better or more perfect. Only our memories distorted them to make them seem better than they were. Adults look at their youths as carefree and wonderful when they weren't. People in the 2020's look on past decades with fondness and longing that no one would have had at the time. (Though considering how stressful 2020 already is, who can blame them?) 

The Rome of Fall is a biting commentary that shows that nostalgia is simply a trick of the memory. There were no good old days, just days.