Strong Heart book review by Charlie Sheldon

Strong Heart by Charlie Sheldon

Charlie Sheldon, the author of Strong Heart, lives in Ballard Washington, always keeping up with his love of writing. He is working on the next tale called Adrift, which will be published in 2018. Charlie has been a writer a long time with his publication of Fat Chance which came out in 2005. In his long life, he went to Yale and University of Massachusetts for Wildlife Biology and received a Master’s degree. He then began a lengthy career on the sea as a fisherman in New England, catching lobster, cod, haddock, red crab, and squid before being a consultant for Fishery Management Councils, then 28 years working on seaports as project and construction manager then being a Seaman and Bosun on a military ship.

Strong Heart is a 246-page book that you can either read or listen to. It grabs your attention as soon as you read it. As you read, you know there is a journey inside of a journey and you want to read until the end just to see what happens.

There’s a knock on the door and Tom answers it to find his ex-wife and a girl on his doorstep. His ex-wife says this is your granddaughter, Sarah and leaves. Tom was going hiking and camping on the mountain to make sure his grandfather’s grave was secure from the possibility of the mountain being developed. His friends persuade him to take Sarah with them and off they go with Tom saying it’s not a clever idea. At first, Sarah doesn’t want to go thinking it’s the end of the earth. Along the way, Sarah sees things that no one else does and William and his daughter believe her. Then it is discovered that Tom found an Native Indian artifact years ago and took it off the mountain and that he is part Native. Then Sarah goes missing, they search for her before calling for help. Eventually, the search is called off and only Tom, William are left to search. After being missing for 8 days, she finds her way to her grandfather. When she comes back she tells them what happened but only William believes her. Because of this, Sarah’s grandmother takes her back. Things began to happen as you continue to read this book that proves that she is telling the truth. You will need to read the book to find out.

This book is a story of coming of age for a teenage girl who it seems no one wants. First her mother dies years ago, then her stepdad decides to ship her off to her grandparents because he wants a time out, then her grandmother and her husband ships her off to Tom, her grandfather. Through this story, you see Sarah starting to grow and you start hoping that she has a permanent home with her grandfather. The relationship between her and her grandfather start to grow from not believing her to in the end believing her in what she says.

This is also an adventure book in that when they hike up the mountain something happens to them as a group and Sarah, alone. She goes missing for days and when she comes back with her own journey, her grandfather, Tom doesn’t believe her.

I love this book and can’t wait until I get to read Adrift next year. It is an amazing book with no mistakes that I can read. Charlie gives good detail on what is going on and what they see which is great because it’s like you are there with them climbing, hiking and camping. There is nothing that I didn’t like about this book.

I would rate this book a 4 out of 4 because it’s that good. Normally, this kind of book would have taken me days to read but this one I read almost all of it in one night. This book is good for teenagers, young adults and even adults. If you love family oriented, adventure and coming of age books then this is for you. I highly recommend everyone to read it for themselves.

A Book Review on The King of Anavrea by Rachel Rossano

King of Anavrea by Rachel Rossano is the second book in the Theodoric Saga, was published on the 15th of October in the year 2014. It is considered to be a Christian and fantasy book. Rachel was the oldest of four children to a missionary pastor and his wife. She was always reading a book and decided to put her adventures down on paper.

What would you do if your older brother abdicated the throne and you were the king even if you didn't want to be? That is what happened to Ireic Theodoric, King of Anavrea. He is king because his brother abdicated the throne and you will see why if you read the first book in this saga.

What would you do if you were just a pawn to your father, just someone he remembered when you are useful to him, that is the life of Princess Lirth Parnan, the only daughter of the King of Sardmara.

When Ireic, King of Anavrea goes to Sardmara to sign a treaty he finds to his dismay that he is to marry the king’s daughter also. For the sake of his country and people, he signs the treaty but finds out that his bride is not there. He goes looking for her and rescues her from her captors. Lirth has been waiting for this day for years, someone to rescue her, but is it friend or foe. Then she finds out that her rescuer is her husband to be. Can he be trusted? She is at first afraid of him then she falls ill with fever. He learns that she is blind. The council won’t like it, but he did vow to marry her? He takes her to his brother’s home, where she recovers, and they marry. His vow to marry Lirth could cost him his life and throne.

The Theodoric Saga Book 2 | Source

Ireic and Lirth run into problems since the day they arrived at the castle. In Ireic absence, the council has convened and has made laws without the king there. So Ireic has to spend long hours with the council to undo the laws they put in place and to make matters worse they find out that their Queen is blind and try to come up with a way to dispose of her causing Ireic to disband the council and causing some of them to rebel and start a revolt. Then someone tries to kill Lirth but injured Ireic instead. They flee the castle and head to Ireic's only property to regroup. His brother is there waiting for him with loyal soldiers. In the end he gets his castle back and routes out his enemies.

My favorite character in this book is Lirth for many reasons but the main reason is that she didn't let her blindness get in her way of what she wanted. She didn't give up when she was held captive for five years, she clung to her faith in God. She was able to portray calm and serenity on the outside even if she didn't feel it to help Ireic. When she had hard times, she didn't complain just accepted it and moved on. I can relate to her in that I may not be blind but I am hearing impaired. Even though this is just a book, we both have God that we hold on to. It was not easy for her to be blind but she didn't let her down. I wish that I had read this book years ago. I could have learned a lesson in not allowing my hearing impairment get in the way of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a nurse but didn't think I could with my hearing loss.

My favorite part of the book is of course the ending where they both come through their problems together and stronger. I loved the whole book but this is my favorite part. They had many obstacles to overcome and they did without giving up.

I think the author did a great job in regards how the characters go together. There wasn't anything out of place in that the scenes and the characters meshed together. There wasn't anything in this book that shouldn't have been there. For me, there was nothing that I didn't like about this book. I couldn't see or read any grammar or spelling errors.

For me, this book is 4 out of 4 stars because it caught my attention from the beginning. This is my third time reading this amazing romance, intrigue and time period book. And since I love it this much, I bought the book so I could reread it in the future. This book will interest readers who love to read clean romance, about rebellions, intrigue and adventure. I would definitely recommend this book to other readers.

Book Review on Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Panic Attacks by Geert Verschaeve

Lisa JaSite

Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks by Geert Verschaeve is a nonfiction book that gives you science-based techniques to recover from anxiety and stop panic attacks. Geert Verschaeve is the founder of ilovepanicattacks.com. This book was published in 2017 by GV Publishing. It was printed in Great Britain by Amazon.

This book promises to “uncover science based and counterintuitive techniques designed to end unwanted anxiety and stop panic attacks. This book also promises a step-by-step plan on how to respond and what to think in the anxious situations that still frighten you; you will learn how to overcome fear and anticipatory anxiety; different sensations anxiety can give to your body and how to deal with it; get a list of ingredients to avoid that increase anxiety and can cause panic attacks and discover how to stop checking in all the time, so you can get on with your life” (Badass Ways to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks by Geert Verschaeve, on back cover).

This book is divided up into three crucial parts. The first part is about the counterintuitive truth about anxiety and panic attacks. The second part is learning new techniques that will help anxiety and stop panic attacks and the last part is how to blend what you learned in the first two parts together.

The author mentions some of his clients and what their symptoms were so we can see that we are not alone in anxiety. In the first part, we the reader learn what anxiety and panic attacks are, there symptoms and the difference between good and bad anxiety. He explains that we need good anxiety. He also touches on the four steps to recovery and what happens when we have it and the causes. This first part is crucial because in order to get rid of this problem, we need to understand what it is and what is the core or root of the problem so we can fix it and not cover it up.

In the second part of this book, he touches on how to get your life back with some techniques. For example, he talks about how not to care what people think; how to feel safe, what to tell yourself when overcoming anxiety and panic attacks; how to deal with failure, etc. There are many other things that he teaches about this. In this part he gives you everything you need to stop those panic attacks and anxiety.

The third part is putting everything you learned and read in the first two parts into practice for example, don't avoid places that make you anxious just expose yourself to it.

The author accomplishes what he set out to do with with examples of some of his clients and how they overcame their anxiety and panic attacks to thinking exercises on what their trigger is to other techniques that will help and how to put it all together.

Geert Verschaeve has had panic attacks and anxiety for fourteen years which is why he wrote this book. He found a solution and made people aware by explaining what he did on his website. By explaining his solution, he has helped thousands of people who suffer from panic attacks and anxiety. This makes him a person qualified to write this book.

The tone of this book starts out with humor in that he talks about his anxiety and panic attacks as if they are his life long companions instead of his problem. He even mentions that he is glad that he had these problems and how his anxiety and panic attacks made him the man he is today. All throughout this book, he wrote it in a format that is easy to read and understand. The way it is written anyone can relate.

I would rate this a 5 out of 5 stars because for me personally, even though I don’t suffer from this malady, I was still able to understand what the author was trying to convey. This book was perfect the way it was, and I wouldn’t change anything. There was nothing that I didn’t like about this book except that I feel bad that the author had to suffer from this for so many years except on a positive note, he was able to help himself and so many others because of it. I loved that he shared his personal life with the reader and it makes it easier to relate to him as a sufferer and not just someone writing this book as a professional with no personal knowledge. I wanted to read this book so that I might have some way of helping my own sister who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. She has had this problem all her life and still does. She did have a job for about 3 months and she loved but due to her panic attacks and anxiety she was fired from her job and now she doesn’t work. I would love to be able to help her overcome it and by reading this book, I will do just that. This book would be good for people who suffer from panic attacks and anxiety and wants to get rid of them and for their family and friends who want to help and understand them