Reviewed by Valerie
TITLE: Roman
AUTHOR: Annabella Stone
SERIES: Tags of Honor #5
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 228 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 29, 2021
BLURB:
Fact: Six years ago, former Force Recon Marine Roman Walsh made the biggest mistake of his life and chose duty to his country over love. Fact: He was an idiot. Now the one he loves is missing, and Roman has only one thing on his mind. Get him back alive. Fact: He will risk everything, even his position at Red Squadron do it or die trying!
Fact: Lucifer Brady has never stopped loving the idiot who ripped out his heart and stomped it into the ground. Fact: When a contract job in the Middle East goes to hell in a handbasket, he never expected Roman to break every rule in the book to be the one to rescue him. Can he trust that Roman won’t walk away again? Fact: His heart tells him to fight with everything that he is to keep the one who makes his heart soar.
When lines are crossed and the world explodes around them, to survive, these two battle hardened warriors must trust in the one thing they swore they would never believe in again—love. They are about to find out, when the battle stops, passion reigns.
REVIEW:
Roman is the fifth book in Annabella Jacobs’ Tags of Honor series. It’s another entertaining and engrossing military action/romance in the same vein as her many successful military novels set in the Middle East and starring sexy, steamy alpha males. This one features Roman Walsh, a member of Red Squadron, a Joint Special Operations Command black ops team. The action is immediate with Roman deep into Ghazni Province, Afghanistan. Once that mission is complete, he’s back on the ground in Iran, with Saxon and Reese, trying to find, rescue, and extract a missing American contractor. Said contractor is Luc Brady, the man Roman secretly fell hard for then walked away from six years prior. No goodbye, just a cruel Dear John letter to the man who loved him.
Presently, Luc is being held captive and tortured by a sadistic fuckwad in Tehran. Once he’s rescued and face to face with Roman again, he experiences a hell of another kind. They return to Red Squadron’s home base in Santorini and while awaiting orders for the next phase of their operation, they dance around each other – anger, resentment, and guilt warring with desire. Luc wants – and deserves – answers from Roman to justify his actions six years ago, but Roman struggles to know what to say. He’s too prideful to admit he was wrong and provide Luc with the shameful truth.
One of the features of the previous books I was most enamored with was the very strong found family vibe that is less present here. I miss the easy camaraderie the men shared, the banter and teasing and obvious love for one another. In Roman, the team is largely split up, with Drax and Noah off looking for Rexar in Slovenia (the overlapping plot of Drax), and Zenko and Shaun – my favorites – “off chasing ghosts”. Noble and Max are present to a lesser degree than usual. In fact, it’s mainly Castiel and Mike who have any down time with Roman and Luc. Also absent is a full team operation which is always exciting and suspenseful. On the positive side, editing is much tighter this time around, which makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.
Roman and Luc receive their happy ending and the team presses forward with unraveling the intel on the planned terrorist attack on Diego Garcia – the over-arching series crisis. Roman is a must-read for anyone already entrenched in the series; not only is it a great read about our beloved Red Squadron boys, it overlaps with the other books and they all build upon each other. For readers new to Ms. Jacobs or the Tags of Honor series, this is not a standalone. I recommend beginning with the superb first installment, Zenko.
RATING: 
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