Guest Post (and a Giveaway!): Cleopatra Margot & With You I Am

Welcome to the Blog + Review Tour for With You I Am by Cleopatra Margot, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours! I’m delighted to welcome Cleopatra to the blog today to chat about one of her fave quotes from With You I Am!

WITH YOU I AM
Series: Bryant Family #1
Author: Cleopatra Margot
Publisher: Faith to Love Publishing
Release Date: June 21, 2021
Genre: Contemporary Christian romance

Event coordinator Noelle Carter’s main priority is running the successful company her grandparents founded. After all, they’re the ones who raised her, and she’s the one they entrusted their company to after their deaths. So when a letter comes across her desk inviting her to plan the Spring Fling in her grandmother’s hometown of Balsam Falls, Nebraska, she’s faced with a choice: stay and work on maintaining Carter, Inc.’s current success, or go and take a leap of faith–outside of her comfort zone.

For contractor Wynn Bryant, helping others is the key to life’s greatest blessings. Over the past ten years, he and his brother have built homes for those who need them, creating a reputable name for themselves. Between that and helping out at the Serendipity Inn, his parents’ bed and breakfast, he’s put his other dreams on the back burner for now. Until the mayor ropes him into restoring The Gardens with a beautiful but guarded young CEO from Mississippi.

Connected by a desire to help others, Wynn and Noelle dive into restoring a neglected piece of Balsam Falls’s history while learning from, and of, their own pasts. Together they uncover past secrets, current challenges, and help each other discover healing and forgiveness in ways neither imagined. Will their discoveries lead to love, or are some things better left as they are?

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Also available to read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited

by Cleopatra Margot, author of With You I Am

First of all, I’d like to thank you for inviting me to do a guest post on your blog!

Today I’d like to talk about a quote that really stuck out to me from With You I Am and how come I found it so inspirational. At a certain point in the book, you’ll find the heroine Noelle Carter talking to John Bryant, Wynn’s father, on the dock. There’s a gentle breeze, water lapping at the edges of the dock, and John extends a few words of wisdom to Noelle that I feel can be useful to me and my readers as well.

John says: “I’ve found that one quote about God wrecking our plans when He sees they’re gonna wreck us to be pretty accurate. And sometimes that hurts. The wreckage is often painful. Often times, you feel buried under the rubble of it. It can even feel like He’s not there. And while some people mistake those times for God’s lack of presence, I like to think of it as His lack of presents as in the wrapped with a bow kind. Because as badly as we think a sugarcoated, pretty wrapped box is going to fix our problems, that’s not what will. It’s in those low, often painful, moments that we find the real gift, and that’s the never-ending love of God.”

For me, personally, I’ve been buried in that “wreckage” before. In between my co-written novel and my first solely written novel, I was sick. Nothing I was doing seemed to work and it was frustrating. I was frustrated.

But the beautiful thing is that, once I finally listened to God and finally set aside my stubbornness (which still occasionally comes back!), I started to see God working in that pain. Looking back now, I’m so glad He didn’t allow me to continue with what I was trying to pursue—even if it wasn’t actually “bad”—and nudged me onto a better path. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten to this point today and I wouldn’t be sharing the story I am in With You I Am.

I hope that my readers can take something away from this book, whether that be the courage to try something new or to forgive someone. There’s a lot of forgiveness that has to take place for characters to overcome things from their pasts, and I think it’s a good lesson for anybody. Forgiveness is a necessary, albeit sometimes painful, part of life. It’s an everyday thing that we have to choose to do.

So if you’re in those moments of wreckage, if you’re upset with God because He wrecked the plans you thought were perfect, I hope this can be an encouragement to you. I hope that, whether it’s by reading this blog post or reading my book or simply listening to God, you can see the beauty in what God’s trying to do in your life.

Again, thank you SO much for the opportunity to write this blog post and share a little bit about something meaningful to me!

God bless, Cleopatra

CONNECT WITH CLEOPATRA: Website | Facebook | Instagram

(1) winner will receive a signed paperback book, a bookmark featuring a quote from the book, a vinyl sticker with a quote, and a $10 Starbucks gift card!

Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight July 12, 2021 and lasts through 11:59 PM EST on July 19, 2021. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE

This giveaway is hosted by JustRead Tours, not RimSP
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

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What about you? What makes you want to read With You I Am by Cleopatra Margot?