• The Faithful

  • By: S. M. Freedman
  • Narrated by: Tanya Eby
  • Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (1,442 ratings)

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The Faithful  By  cover art

The Faithful

By: S. M. Freedman
Narrated by: Tanya Eby
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Publisher's summary

FBI agent Josh Metcalf believes he has uncovered a decades-long conspiracy involving missing children. His obsession has led him to compile hundreds of cases. All involve children rumored to have psychic abilities - and all have no witnesses, no leads, and no resolution.

Meanwhile Rowan Wilson, a meteorite hunter for NASA's Spaceguard Program, is losing her grip on the past. Memories of the childhood she thought she'd had are vanishing, and dark recollections of kidnappings, mind control, and an isolated mountain ranch are taking their place.

When Rowan's shadowed past converges with Josh's research, they uncover a deadly plot to reshape humanity. With the world's survival dependent on stopping a vast network of conspirators, can they decipher - and expose - the truth in time?

©2015 S. M. Freedman (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

What listeners say about The Faithful

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic!

Would you listen to The Faithful again? Why?

I will definitely read The Faithful again. Just as soon as the sequel is published! Great story. The villains were properly villainous and occasionally you couldn't tell whom to trust. Exciting, with many twists and turns. I want to know what happened to the Sheriff!

Which scene was your favorite?

Without giving anything away, I guess the rescue at the farm.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Can we be saved?

Any additional comments?

Don't waste time considering! Buy this book!

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61 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Bad on a cracker

This book desperately needed an editor and a decent narrator. That might have raised it to 3 star levels. The plot starts out intriguing, with an interesting premise, but the author just couldn't pull it off. It devolved about half-way through into unbelievable, annoying and tedious.

It needed to be edited to rid itself of the tedium, and a decent narrator to improve the "annoying" factor. Ms. Eby was simply not up to the task of reading all those characters (especially the male voices, of which she appears to have about two.)

I'm not sure, however, what Freedman might have done with the unbelievable, but there was a lot of it. I'm OK with fantastic and can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but this author wants the reader to accept actual violations of the laws of physics and that makes any *adult* story merely silly, bordering on stupid. It also suggests an author who either doesn't care about maintaining even a modicum of reality - or doesn't know how.

And, finally, it turns out that this isn't a stand-alone novel. In order to tie up the loose ends, we have to buy another book. This is a serial, not a series - and that makes it a rip-off. I have a number of favorite series, but when a novel doesn't *end*, but merely stops, and requires you to pay for the next installment, it's dishonest.

Audible gets this one back. Unfortunately, I can't get back the hours I wasted on this mess.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A Little Uneven, but pretty good for a first novel

This listen was good in spite of being a little uneven. It was pretty good effort for a first novel. I feel that it would have been easier to track the plot if the characters had had more depth. This read/listen will probably resonate better with adolescent audiences than old codgers like myself.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

One star for this novel is being very generous!

An end times cult has been kidnapping hundreds of psychic children for 50 years and using those children as they mature to breed more psychic children. Many of the children have the (nonexistent) power of telekinesis (the ability to move objects using the power of the brain only). The group finally has the enough telekinetic power to redirect dozens of sizable asteroids toward specific spots on the earth during a short period of time to cause maximum destruction. Never forgetting the importance of suspending disbelief to enjoying fiction, this is far more suspension than I am capable of.

The Faithful deserves ZERO stars.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

So stupid

I feel like this is ridiculous to say about a supernatural thriller but this is just stupid. It starts out interesting and given the nature of the book, I was willing to suspend my disbelief. However, the author destroyed any good faith you offer as a reader with shitty, annoying characters and unforgivable dialogue. The narrator wasn't great but the horrible howlers she had to read made her mediocre performance plummet to cringe worthy. Even worse is the tedious, uninspired romance which literally had me fast forwarding through whole sections. Most egregious is the fact that this whole book is a set up for a series. I mean, really? How about concentrating on make one good book instead of a series of crappy books. Whoever, SM Freedman is, you owe me 9 hours of my life.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars
  • SE
  • 08-19-16

Interesting premise, but I couldn't finish it

Would you try another book from S. M. Freedman and/or Tanya Eby?

Unlikely

Would you ever listen to anything by S. M. Freedman again?

Maybe. The premise of The Faithful was intriguing, but it felt like it could benefit from a lot more editing. It dragged on without covering what could have been much more interesting areas.

What didn’t you like about Tanya Eby’s performance?

Her male voices made all of the male characters sound like slow witted buffoons. Impossible to reconcile the voices with the author's descriptions of the male characters' traits

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The idea of a cult who bred supernatural abilities seemed great. But there were far too many superfluous items that didn't add to the story or didn't make sense.

Any additional comments?

I hate giving up, but I just couldn't justify spending time getting through the rest of the book.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Bland Characters, Plot and Narration-a Meh.....

S.M.Freedman, whoever he/she is has given we listeners and readers what appears to be the first novel of his/her writing careen..at least I HOPE it's the first novel. If the author has a load of books under his belt, he has a great deal to answer for!

Characters are cardboard, his story arcs are unfinished and uneven and leave the reader/listener with dangling threads.

About an hour into my listen I thought "Ah-ha-Eugenics rears its ugly head once more"...it took the book until chapter 70 out of 79 to finally actually bring Eugenics out to the light...along with climate change and the end of the world as we know it.

Thats what I mean about uneven writing. It takes an OBVIOUS idea such as Eugenics and beats it to death.

As for the narrator..I think she did as well as the lifeless plot gave her the words to do. Eby has never been a sterling narrator for male voices and she hasn't improved.

I got this book as a Daily Deal and did the grind working my way thru it..but it's going back to Audible..thank goodness for the liberal return policy.

I really disliked the book, hook/line & sinker..it's a stinker!

Don't waste your credit!

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Sweet Listen

I restarted the book about chapter 7. I felt like I might have missed something important. The farther I got into the book the better it got. Great length. Likable characters.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Could not tolerate the narration

Egads the male voices were Horrible. Most of the time I can get past lousy narration but within the first 30 minutes the book changed from first person to third person back to first person, the males all sounded like caricatures from someone attempting to immitate the cartoons from her childhood, and the breath placement was mid-sentence often enough to be seriously distracting. This narrator should stick to mindless romances and children's books. I kept getting animated figures in my mind which is not the way I prefer to read.

After pausing the book, I read through many reviews that mentioned child molestation. I'm returning the book after I submit this review.

I've listened to hundreds of books in the past six years. This is the second one in all that time I have not finished once I started it and subsequently I returned it.

Never again will I attempt another book by this author or this narrator. It was seriously that horrendous.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • m
  • 06-22-16

This book hit all my sweet spots.

ESP, conspiracy, action, a little romance, plus a narrator who is perfectly matched to the book. The plot goes in so many different directions at once, but Freedman manages to tie it all together in the end.
Docking one star, however, because nearly every woman is described in terms of her physical attractiveness (including one minor character who seems to be introduced only for us to laugh at). This is not the case for the men, and the objectification (even though by a female author) bothered me.

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3 people found this helpful