When in Rome: A Novel

Noah Walker was born and raised in Rome, Kentucky, a town where his family has lived for generations. He is the oldest of four siblings and often feels protective of his younger sisters, who in turn care for him as well. When he was young, he would go to the pie shop where his mother and grandmother worked and where decades of Walkers before them have made pies from carefully guarded secret recipes. Noah’s love for and dedication to the pie shop reflects the novel’s thematic interest in Loving Things for Sentimental Reasons. When Noah was 10, his parents went on a camping vacation where they were caught in a storm and died. Afterward, his grandmother Silvie took guardianship of Noah and his sisters.

Before the events of the story, Noah spends his whole life in Rome until, at age 29, he meets a woman from New York City named Merritt who’s in Rome to sell a property that belonged to a relative. Noah and Merritt quickly fall in love, and before she leaves Rome, he spontaneously proposes to her. Merritt agrees, on the stipulation that Noah move to New York. In New York, Noah uses his business degree to get a job that will please Merritt, yet things quickly deteriorate for the couple as Noah isn’t happy and feels forced to be someone else in the city. The physical attraction between him and Merritt cools, making them realize they aren’t as interested in one another as they thought. While in New York, Noah’s grandmother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so he returns to Rome to help with her care. Though he and Merritt attempt a long-distance relationship, it ends when she accidentally texts Noah something that was meant for the co-worker with whom she’s having an affair.

Heartbroken, Noah pledges that he’ll never date someone from outside of Rome again. He takes over his grandmother’s pie shop, despite his disinterest in pies, and he and his sisters take turns visiting their grandmother every day after they place her in an assisted living facility. Though many women in town find Noah attractive, he never dates. Noah has always been surly and private, but his experience in New York with Merritt exacerbates those qualities, leaving him little patience with the small-town gossip in Rome. Even so, Noah continues to go out of the way to help others, including the pop star whose car breaks down in his front yard.

Like Amelia, Adams presents Noah as a dynamic character, positioning his meet-cute with Amelia in his front yard as the inciting incident of his personal arc as well as the romantic arc of the narrative. While he tries to maintain his boundaries around dating outside after he meets Amelia, his attraction to her and their growing romance forces him to consider what he really wants most. Though Noah and Amelia are in many ways opposites—highlighting the grumpy sunshine trope common to the romance genre— each helps the other learn what is most important to them. Toward the end of the novel, Noah finally faces the trauma of his parents’ death and Merritt’s betrayal, allowing him to begin the healing process that paves the way for a serious relationship with Amelia. With the help of his sisters and his community, Noah recognizes that his love for Amelia is the most important thing to him and that he doesn’t need to give up his entire life in Rome to have it.

The Walker family has lived in the town of Rome for generations, where they own and run Pie Shop in the center of town. Silvie, the matriarch, is as known for her warm character as she is for her pies and the grandchildren she adopted after her daughter’s death who love her deeply. When Silvie is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and moves into an assisted living facility, her four grandchildren do everything they can to ensure she has the best care and visit her nearly every day. The four Walker siblings are all affected differently by their parents’ passing. 

Adams positions Emily and Noah, the oldest of the Walker siblings, as foils for each other. While Noah is persuaded to leave Rome because of love, Emily constantly grapples with her biggest fear: her family leaving her behind. Traumatized by the death of her parents, the eldest Walker daughter works hard to keep the family close, instituting traditions and reasons for all of them to stay in Rome. Though she addresses this fear with Noah toward the end of When in Rome, it deeply affects her relationship with her other sisters. Emily always takes charge of her siblings, and when her middle sister Madison considers moving away for culinary school, Emily convinces her to stay in Rome and become a teacher like herself. Emily begins to see how wrong this is over the course of the When in Rome series, especially when her relationship with her sisters and her own love life takes center stage in the third book in the series, Beg, Borrow, or Steal. Despite her sister’s enthusiasm for teaching, Madison hates being a teacher and feels trapped in Rome. The youngest Walker, Annabelle, feels similarly trapped in her role within the family. Considered the innocent angel of the group, Annie feels like her siblings don’t take her seriously and treat her like a child, despite being a successful business owner. Even so, Annie is the most sentimental and intuitive of the Walkers, and her relationship with her siblings and her role in the family is the focus of the series’ second novel, Practice Makes Perfect.