Review by Dafanie K -- Strong Heart by Charlie Sheldon

[Dafanie K]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Strong Heart" by Charlie Sheldon.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Strong Heart, the first book in the Strong Heart Series, written by Charlie Sheldon is a fictional book that encompasses adventure, mystery, magic, and thriller in one power-packed coming-of-age story. It follows the life of a young girl, Sarah, whose life is about to take a complete turn after the death of her mother at the formative age of thirteen.

Sarah is a defiant, difficult, and stubborn child but exceptionally talented and clever. She is left at the hands of her grandfather who was oblivious to Sarah’s existence. Right before this discovery, he and his comrades were planning to take a trek to his grandfather’s grave out in the wild. At the advice of his lifelong friend, he reluctantly allows Sarah to join them. Little did he know that it is Sarah who will be taking him on this journey.

Sarah learns about her ancestry, and soon the story takes on a magical ride through the mystical forests and waters of the Olympic Peninsula. Sarah’s adventure will prove to be critical to an ongoing rivalry between the interest of the Sol Duc tribe and powerful serving commissioner, Fletcher Lynch, who wants to allow mining activities in the land. Sarah's deep-seated encounter with ancient magic puts a lot of people at stake, but if victorious, it could save the day and answer age-old questions of history.

The narrative is easy to follow but it is far from boring. Unexpected plots, drama, and tension will keep you at the edge of your seat. The strength of the story, however, lies in the detail. The author paints such brilliant imagery of the landscape, the ridges, mountains, valleys and sea, that you can conclude this was the result of years of research. Without the author’s evident knowledge of wildlife and the ocean, it is hard to imagine the success of this tale. I thoroughly enjoyed learning new terminology related to the outdoors.

The book is well-edited with no typing or grammatical errors that I could find, though there was one grammatical ambiguity with the repetition of the word ‘had’ three times that made the sentence look stylistically unattractive. This may have been a typo or originally intended by the author. Either way, it does not place any dent on how well-written the book is. There are instances of violence and use of profane words so this book may not be well suited for younger children. The audience best suited for this book would be older teens with a knack for adventure stories. I rate this book a four out of four stars for its immense attention to detail and page-turning suspense.

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Strong Heart
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