4 STARS!!!
Synopsis
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.”

Denise’s Review
Good Faith tells the story of the children of a close knit group of friends, a group of friends who have their stories told in the Stewart Realty series.  A series I read and love so for me this book was not stand alone.

Good Faith is a long book that takes place over a number of years crafting what is truly a painful and powerful portrayal of addiction and the devastating effect it has on the addict and those around them.  This makes for some gut-wrenching scenes one that will have the reader likely shaking their head at this disease that destroys so much as it overtakes someone.

The voice of addiction was heard loud and clear in this book; the use of actions and events and dialogue truly spoke to how addiction effects all those close to the addict or as seen early on in the book all those who can see the train wreck coming and have no idea how to stop it or if they even can. This for me was the best part of the book; I truly really looked at addiction.

This book will also have you asking, What is cheating? Is it physical or emotional; which hurts more and how do you move forward?

As this couples move forward, raise children, build careers and deal with heartache and triumph, do they turn to their spouse for comfort or someone one new… and what do you do when you or your spouse seeks comfort elsewhere? Because this book deals with so many families, Ms. Crowe was able to ask all of this in one book.

I am not going to share the story line or even go into who is who because honestly there are so many characters in this book it would make the review too long.
I will say that as I try to put my thoughts into this review that I am not sure the book can truly be read stand alone. These characters lives is so intertwined and there are so many characters for a new reader to be feel vested with. As part of the series prior readers of the series will know all of these characters and will truly feel vested in their lives, their actions and their emotions. Series readers be warned you may not be happy with all the outcomes (and for me personally the actions of one character felt truly out of character for the man I had come to adore and thought I understood as a character).

This book works to show the lives of so many intertwined lives, that eb and flow as life moves forward. Much of this was really well done, though at times the descriptions put a new reader on the same page as a series reader were cumbersome.

This is the kind of book that when you step away from it, it will have you thinking about it and likely hoping you can return to it soon to see what happens next. It was interesting to see the authors idea as to how these people I have some to love mature and develop, often times departing from how I would have thought they would behave.
At times I was unsure I believed the characters I knew at the end of Escalation Clause would behave this way but Ms. Crowe put some years between that book and this book so maybe…

The prior books in this series have so much dialogue, it was one of the things I loved most about this series and Ms. Crowe’s writing style. Sadly, this was lacking in Good Faith. There were a lot of descriptions and explanations; explaining backstory and who people were and sometimes even the character dynamics. Writing a book 8 as a stand alone can be tough, needing to explain for those new to this cast, for me it caused the read to lack some of what I have always loved about this author’s writing; heavy dialogue.

This book was so very different from the prior books in the series as I said prior. I missed the dialogue I had come to count on from this series. When the dialogue was there, is was really well done as Ms. Crowe has a wonderful ability to create character banter between her characters.

Also, the prior books in this series did an amazing job weaving descriptive and passionate sex into a wonderful story timeline something that is rare and I adore (prior books contained some my favorite sex scenes), this book dialed back the readers view of the sex so for me it changed the tone of the series.

Changing two elements (the amount of dialogue and the view of sex) for me changed the voice of the series.

So, I struggled with how to rate this book, do I rate it as a book as part of the series, or do I rate just this book because for me these when it comes to this book those are two different things.

In the end, I decided to rate the book for the book, so I am giving it 4 stars.

I do want to add I often early read book so errors don’t tend to bother me but when I pay for a book I expect it to have no typos – sadly that was not the case in Good Faith.

About the Author

Microbrewery owner, best-selling author, beer blogger and journalist, mom of three teenagers, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town. Years of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as an ex-pat trailing spouse, plus making her way in a world of men (i.e. the beer industry), has prepped her for life as a successful author.

When she isn’t sweating inventory and sales figures for the brewery, she can be found writing, editing or implementing promotions for her latest publications. Her groundbreaking literary fiction subgenre, “reality fiction,” has gained thousands of fans and followers who are interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”)

Her beer blog a2beerwench.com is nationally recognized for its insider yet outsider views on the craft beer industry. Her books are set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch and in high-powered real estate offices. Don’t ask her for anything “like” a Budweiser or risk painful injury.