Good Faith by Liz Crowe [Review & Giveaway]

Genre:	General Fiction/New Adult
Publication.Date	November 15th 2013
Pages:	522
Published By:	Tri Destiny Publishing
Website	Liz Crowe
	Good Faith Goodreads

Where to get:

Strong personalities—volatile marriages—stressful careers—conflicting goals—difficult children.

Contemporary challenges facing close-knit families form the crucible that forges a new generation.

Brandis, Gabriel, Blair and Lillian emerge from the entanglement of their parents’ longstanding emotional connections, but one’s star will burn brighter – and hotter – than the others.

With a personality that consumes everyone and everything in its path, Brandis Gordon struggles to maintain control as he ricochets between wild success and miserable failure. His life proves how even the strongest relationships can be strangled by the ties that bind.

Brandis and Gabe Frietag are as close as any brothers, bound by both loyalty and fierce rivalry. The strength of their ultimate alliance is tested time and again by Brandis’ choices.

Companions from birth, Blair Frietag and Lillian Robinson share loner tendencies, but come to rely on each other through adolescence. As they mature, both are forced to confront their feelings for the men they knew as boys.

Somewhere between the tangle of good memories and bad, independence and addiction, optimism and despair, the intertwined destinies of the new generation finally collide, leaving some stronger, others broken, but none unscathed.

As a chronicle of three families navigating the minefields of teen years into the turbulence of young adulthood, Good Faith holds up a literary mirror to contemporary life with joys and temptations unflinchingly reflected. Its fresh, real-life voice portrays the sheer volatility of human nature, complete with the hopes, dreams, and unexpected setbacks of marriage, parenthood and “coming of age.”

“After all they had been through, all the anger, disappointment, tears and frustration he still had the ability to wipe the slate clean with the touch of his lips to hers. Love, she supposed, pure and simple and yet more complex than anything in the universe."

 “You know what I require of you--you whole self not just your physical shell. Don't leave me alone, emotionally cut off, Jack. I don't... I can't operate that way. Don't take that from me, and I won't need anything from anyone else. Okay? He seemed to ponder her blunt statement, his head cocked to the side as if hearing something mildly interesting. Then nodded and walked out without another word."

 “Thanks for getting rid of the gang of evil in there for me. She drew back, put her hand to his face. I love you, she said, simply. Then stepped out of his embrace. And please inform that girl if she looks at you one more time like she would just as soon eat you for breakfast, she can come and chat about it with me. He smiled, touched his fingertip to her lips. At that moment, he loved her so much he would have moved heaven and earth to make her happy."

“Blair couldn't form words. She leaned away from her mother's irritating presence, fixing her eyes on her goal--Brandis, who stood, holding his plate and staring right at her. Her mother must have gotten up and left, Blair didn't remember. All she knew were a pair of deep, sapphire blue eyes, pinning her against the wall from across the room and the ghostly memory of his lips on hers, in the cold, just before hearing her brother's angry words."

HOOK. LINE. AND. SINKER.

I was given an ARC by TriDestiny Publications in exchange for a review.

This book was by far one of my favorite reads in a long time. I quickly see why there is so much feedback on Liz Crowe on Goodreads and Amazon. Her books take you in from the beginning and leave you breathless till the end. This is my first book by her and I am definitely hooked! I found her writing style to be well thought out, exciting, and witty to say the least. The characters in this book were written with such emotion it was hard to pick a character that you were ultimately routing for, as she told the story from all characters points of view. I found it amazing that Liz was able to switch between so many characters personas and write all of them with such strength and emotion. There were literally more than five characters that the story went back and forth on and Liz didn't miss a beat with being able to show the emotion, relationships and drama between any of these characters.

The story dives in to the lives of the children of Sara and Jack Gordon. From the story you can tell that Sara and Jack have an amazing love story that was told in the books before this one. In fact, reviewing this book made me purchase The Stewart Realty Series from the beginning because I just had to see where Jack and Sara started from. However, the reader doesn't need that story to be drawn into this one.

This is the story of Brandis Gordon, son of Jack Gordon, and his addiction. Brandis has everything in life the looks, wealth, popularity and an addiction. His addiction causes turmoil with his entire family. His parents are at odds over how to help. His addiction has affected everyone who has touched his life. At what price will he have to pay before he can overcome this powerful demon? When will he realize that the addition is destroying his life and everyone around him. It will take a great act of "Good Faith" to turn this story around or will it?  Jack and Sara are also in this book as the mother and father of Brandis Gordon. We also come across many of their friends and their families. This book is about all of them. It is about them as parents and raising their children. We get plenty of that steamy chemistry of Jack and Sara. In the end it is about their legacies becoming adults and life coming full circle. It is a great accomplishment for an author to start a series with a set of characters and finish with such gusto and emotional turmoil between family, friends and everyone close to Jack and Sara.

I was captivated by the story, excited to see what would become of all the characters at the end and was unable to put this book down in order to participate in my real life. You can tell that Liz Crowe's series "Stewart Realty" has come full circle in this amazing stand alone novel and the end of the epic story of Jack and Sara. A must read in the genre of new adult or general fiction, I would reccomend anyone who enjoys a great read pick this one up.

GIVEAWAY 

What you can win: GRAND PRIZE: Nook Simple Touch loaded with the Stewart Realty series and the first 3 Black Jack Gentlemen books.

FIRST PRIZE: Signed set of Stewart Realty series (including Good Faith)

SECOND PRIZE: A Stewart Realty Zazzle swag pack PLUS a Wolverine State Brewing Co. t-shirt and pint glass

THIRD PRIZE: Signed set of the first three Black Jack Gentlemen books. (thank you, Tri Destiny Publications!)

Ends: December 18th 

Open to: US and Internationally (no PO boxes please) 

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About the Author:

Website | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook

Amazon best-selling author, beer blogger and beer marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town.  She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse. While working as a successful Realtor, Liz made the leap into writing novels about the same time she agreed to take on marketing and sales for the Wolverine State Brewing Company.   

Most days find her sweating inventory and sales figures for the brewery, unless she’s writing, editing or sweating promotional efforts for her latest publications. 

Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”).  More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”

With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and many times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate, and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.