My thoughts on "Trust: A New Beginning" by Cristiane Serruya

So, I received this ARC in a Goodreads giveaway. Cristiane send me the book and it was so nice of hers to signed it. After almost a month later, here's what I thought of her first novel.

Plot: Trust: A New Beginning is the first part of a trilogy that's about three main characters -a love triangle- Sophia, Alistair and Ethan. It all took place in Great Britain and a little portion in Geneva. It is a story of three attractive people who have dark pasts and who are trying to move on with their lives, but all of them are much more than they show.

First of all, this is not normally the kind of book I would read, but I'm glad I did because it has happened a lot of time since a book kept me awake until 3 or 4 am in the morning trying to found out what happens next. However, I must admit that I wasn't enhanced in the story at the beginning, I found it quite difficult to get it through, mainly because I didn't like Ethan and found Sophia extremely unbelievable, and the story unrealistic. Nevertheless, I kept reading and the story plot began to get better and better.

Characters: I said I found quite hard to believe at the beginning the fact that the main character, Sophia, was 25 years old and already accomplished a lot (almost a PhD, teacher at Cambridge, extremely rich, succesful lawyer and CEO of a multinational oil company, etc.) She seems too good to be true, and let us all the rest of the women in shame, haha. Another thing I notice is that Sophia seems much more mature than Ethan, for example. He is almost 10 years older and still acts a little immature. I understand it has to do with his childhood trauma, but still. I found secondary characters quite likeable, such as Leonard and Gabriela.

Something that might be a little weird but, I just had a doubt, if she and her siblings are Brazilians, why does not they speak Portuguese between them? I just found it curious.

Don't know what to think about Sophia's values, I mean, she portrays herself as a mature, independent, strong woman, and keeps saying to Ethan that "diamonds doesn't buy her affection" but she kept accepting his gifts! Another example is that she is a pro bono lawyer that takes cases of domestic violence and in the protection of women and children, but she seems to attract -and be attracted to- only extremely jealous men that are perfectly capable of hurting her -emotionally and physically- and still she doesn't reacts. I mean, in the book it is quite clear that she is having a debate with herself because of that, but I don't like how she managed the situation either time. I remember there was a point in the book when I thought "can't she attract any decent men?" haha.

General opinion: Definetely this book let me hooked and I really want to read the second one quite soon, where I believe we'll see more of both Ethan and Alistair's darkest parts of themselves. Also, I'm thrilled because seems like the second part is going to take place in Rio, which is exciting. And, there are still a loooot of things that remained unanswered, so I think the second one is going to be a page turner also. Definetely, the sneak peek of the second book included in the end of this book was a cliffhanger so I need the second one!

Something else: I'm team Alistair (so far) :)

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars.