Reviewed by Pikasho Deka for Readers' Favorite

Do you feel stuck in your job or station in life? Do you find it difficult to be happy and can't understand why? You can find the answers to these questions and more in Unlock Happiness By Mastering The Self by Shobeir Shobeyri. In this book, Shobeyri explores how physical, mental, and spirit realms come together to form the self. According to the author, our place in the universe is not so insignificant, and our imperfections make us perfect. The book shows you how to negate self-destructive behaviors, understand human nature and analyze its relationships with the soul, self, and ego, harness your focus, balance your ego, and much more. Shobeyri also introduces readers to the "Self-Laws" and the five fundamental principles of humanity.

Unlock Happiness By Mastering The Self will give you the tools to be full of self-belief and confidence and live the fulfilling life you've always dreamed of. Shobeir Shobeyri masterfully showcases how the value of our minds comes from its gift of consciousness and offers techniques to master the mind and improve upon your knowledge digestion. Using engaging stories and anecdotes, the author provides examples of the practical applications of the relevant topic and gives valuable insights so readers can master these aspects of themselves to better their lives and be happy. Shobeyri also puts forth well-reasoned arguments in favor of religion and God and why they are sorely needed in this increasingly volatile world. I think even the most skeptical of readers will find these arguments compelling. This is one of the most introspective and enlightening books on self I've ever read. I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Maryann Namayi for Readers' Favorite

Heartspoken: How to Write Notes that Connect, Comfort, Encourage, and Inspire by Elizabeth H. Cottrell is a nonfiction self-help book that teaches readers how to write notes that connect with others on a deeper level and provide comfort and inspiration. Cottrell offers a comprehensive professional note-writing guide covering everything from business notes to personal letters. She uses the easy-to-remember NOTES formula to facilitate the learning process. This formula provides learners with a structured approach to note writing, enabling them to convey their most sincere emotions and thoughts effectively. Whether writing short notes or letters, her guidance can help readers preserve their heartfelt sentiments while giving them a voice.

Elizabeth H. Cottrell emphasizes the unique value of note writing as a form of communication that goes beyond words to encourage new ideas and connections. She shares her experiences with handwritten notes as powerful tools for building relationships and conveying support, encouragement, love, and gratitude. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, Heartspoken also offers insight into the challenges the author faced and overcame. It is an uplifting and engaging read, carefully organized with graphic elements to enhance reader engagement. Each chapter is thoughtfully structured to provide context and understanding. Cottrell’s writing is both informative and inspiring, making this book a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their note-writing skills and build stronger connections through the written word. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking personal or professional growth.

Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite

Under the Naga Tail: A True Story of Survival, Bravery, and Escape from the Cambodian Genocide is a work of non-fiction in the memoir, cultural and psychological subgenres. It is best suited to the general adult reading audience for its strong (though non-graphic) content and written by Mae Bunseng Taing with James Taing. As the title suggests, the work conveys the harrowing experience of living through the regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, detailing the life of the teenage Mae as he faces wild landscapes to escape his captors. Eventually stranded as a refugee and separated from his family, Mae only has his faith in a brighter tomorrow to help him survive.

Mae Bunseng Taing has partnered wonderfully with his son James Taing to bring this heartfelt and emotionally raw story to life. It encapsulates the life-threatening tension and constant strain in the atmosphere when a person must live under such extreme and fearful conditions. And yet, there’s a beautiful tenderness to the narrative that allows Mae’s bright personality to shine through, offering perspectives of incredible hope and light despite the dark times of his youth and formative years as a young adult especially. This story provides a deeper understanding of the horrifying realities of the Cambodian genocide, allowing privileged readers a better grasp of these incomprehensible horrors. I recommend that people from all walks of life read Under the Naga Tail for its accomplished writing style and to improve their cultural awareness.

Reviewed by Kimberlee J Benart for Readers' Favorite

A Fraction Stronger: Finding Belief and Possibility in Life’s Impossible Moments is a memoir by Mark Berridge. After sustaining devastating back and bone injuries during a bicycling accident, Mark faced a lengthy hospital stay and nine months in physical rehabilitation. While regaining some of his mobility and navigating through the effects of this sudden disruption to his life, he developed a strategy and philosophy for moving forward in a new direction: “Because it is not about the fall – it is about how we choose to get up.” This well-paced, engagingly written narrative is divided into three topics: Lanterns (seeing possibilities), Angels (moving forward), and Demons (things that could derail us unless we reframe them). Questions after each chapter help the reader focus on a path to recovery.

In A Fraction Stronger, Mark Berridge gives us an inspirational, insightful, and motivational account of his struggle to rebuild not only his physical strength but also his sense of identity and self-worth following a traumatic disruption to the successful career and life path he was on. His advice is phrased in deceptively simple terms: Start by getting through today. Put your heart and soul into the journey. Keep your pathways open. Reach out and in. Face fear. Find moments to help others and yourself. Nurture the “embers” that light your life and give it purpose. Love is a powerful force. I especially liked the definition of bravery: “whatever you need it to be to help you believe.” This is an utterly wonderful read.

Reviewed by Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite

Butterfly Awakens: A Memoir of Transformation Through Grief by Meg Nocero takes you on a transformational journey as she shares her experience of dealing with the tragic loss of her mother, a toxic work environment, and bouts with her own health that involve stress, anxiety, and a somatic nervous disorder. Not another memoir about rising up to life’s challenges, you say? Not another, but an extraordinary one. Nocero takes you beyond grief and makes you understand the work she went through in dealing with the pain of losing a mother and navigating a toxic work environment. This is a story not only of loss but of her journey toward healing as she searches for a lighthouse that manifests in her dreams and ultimately leads to her healing and closure. Like a butterfly that emerges from its chrysalis, you witness Nocero transform into a better version of herself.

In her prologue, Nocero asks you to call her 'butterfly' to represent the symbolism aligning her soul, and I’d be happy to call her that. Her memoir is rich in symbolic meaning and it reminds me of that Trina Paulus storybook, Hope for the Flowers. Nocero achieves individuation through self-searching and abandons the old attitudes that stopped her from spreading her wings. As a memoir, Butterfly Awakens demonstrates how we become vulnerable in our connections to those in our lives who passed away and also makes us vulnerable to the loss of stability as it disrupts our patterns. Nocero writes with raw emotion. Her capacity to cope and creative ability to seek change (including writing this book) is so inspiring that it takes solid footing in the notion that our lives must not stop just because we lost someone dearly beloved. You need to move on, but you should always take the memory of those who touched your life with you. Read it and see if it’s just another one of those memoirs. I dare you.

Reviewed by Trevor Otieno for Readers' Favorite

The inside perspective of the foster care system is presented in depth, intensely intimate, and compellingly by Carmen Maria Navarro. It is an emotive tale about the decisions that actual foster parents must make and the effects those decisions may have on their families. Carmen Maria discusses the effects that fostering has had on her biological children. Fostering is a testament to someone like Carmen Maria, who sometimes sacrifices her peace of mind or that of her children to improve the world and provide for children in need of a better life, if only for a while. Pick up a copy of Fostering: A Memoir of Courage and Hope and set aside some time to read her account of events as they transpired.

This memoir is superbly written and a must-read. It presents challenging material regarding the foster system in a friendly manner. Inspiring examples of resiliency, hope, and love may be found throughout this book. The conversation made me feel as though I was there to witness every event, and the author's choice to continuously express her inner thoughts kept me interested the entire time. The book did a fantastic job of portraying foster care in all its complexity, with both the good and the difficult aspects. Carmen Maria and others like her who are making great efforts to enhance the system that safeguards children have my sincere gratitude. To anyone who appreciates reading about amazing encounters, I heartily suggest Fostering: A Memoir of Courage and Hope. The outstanding work of Carmen Maria Navarro has left me yearning for more.

Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite

A Schizophrenic, Tapped & Skipped: Hope In The Midst Of Madness is a work of non-fiction in the memoir, inspirational and social issues subgenres. It is intended for the mature adult reading audience and was penned by author J Mark Stacy. In this harrowing, raw, and in-depth account of what it’s like to live with those who suffer from severe schizophrenia, we explore the difficulties of one particular family. Herein we learn about the unending power of one mother’s love for her family and how, through her relationship with Christ, she is able to endure the pain and continue to seek solace for those who are vastly overlooked by society at large.

The first word that comes to mind when writing about the reading experience of this novel is ‘worthy’, both because it is worthy of your time as a highly compelling memoir and account of real-life turmoil, but also because the cause which it highlights is incredibly worthy too. The book is not for the faint-hearted and certainly contains a lot of disturbing and upsetting content, but at the same time, there is a keen sense of the importance of the work in bringing mental health issues, particularly schizophrenia, to the forefront of our consciousness to show how little support there is for sufferers. Overall, A Schizophrenic, Tapped & Skipped is a testament to the power of faith and the inner fortitude of a dedicated parent who allows love and light to flow through her, even when times require harsher measures and tough decisions to be made.

Reviewed by Leonard William Smuts for Readers' Favorite

Gregory Diehl breaks new ground with The Heroic and Exceptional Minority. He explores the concept of heroism with all its positive attributes and links it to the search for something beyond mediocrity. There are intelligent and talented people in the world, but they are a minority and do not always reach their true potential. Constraining belief systems prevalent in society, together with our inbuilt fear of failure, conspire with many other factors to imprison them in a paradigm of discontent and estrangement from life in general. Diehl challenges them to be different, to embrace their talents, seek self-knowledge, allow original thought, and shed the conformity that flows from childhood conditioning. Heroism is about overcoming the odds, being true to our core values, living our truth, and seeking justice. It is also about idealism and creating a better reality. This is not an attempt to create an elite corps that will solve the world’s problems by imposing their will on others from a position of arrogance. Instead, the aim is to make readers aware of their uniqueness and potential to become exceptional through making meaningful choices and eliminating the false. The author encourages readers to overcome obstacles, both real and imagined. This book is a call to arms for all those who have felt trapped since childhood by feeling that they were different. Readers will be guided through a thought process that can bring about the freedom they desire while achieving new levels of understanding and excellence.

The Heroic and Exceptional Minority is a breath of fresh air and adopts a unique approach to self-awareness and development. Gregory Diehl has identified key aspects of personal growth through self-discovery. The book is divided into short chapters, each of which relates to a specific topic. These are dealt with in a concise and readable manner and Diehl gets his points across with precision and without over-elaboration or hype. I particularly liked the chapter regarding the intellect, which reflects on the sometimes lonely path of the gifted minority who find it difficult to share concepts with people of lesser understanding. This can lead to isolation or even alienation and begs the question as to whether the intellect is a blessing at all, as there is a perception in some circles that intellectuals are aloof and should be marginalized. The author also makes the important point that intelligent people are neither inherently heroic nor exceptional. These characteristics flow from a state of mind and conscious effort. This book will not appeal to those with closed minds but will be a revelation to readers searching for new depths within themselves. It is a book that is full of insights and practical advice. It should be read once and then studied in detail later. Perhaps then, the minority will flourish.

Reviewed by Frances Deborah Kerr-Phillips for Readers' Favorite

The Satisfied Introvert by Benjamin Plumb is a remarkably candid and intriguing account of the author’s journey through life as he negotiates a world designed for extroverts whilst being far from one himself. His coping mechanism of having what he calls a ‘recipe’ to apply to all situations in which he finds himself ultimately fails to sustain or fulfill him. Plumb reveals his experiences of young love, his stint in the US army in Vietnam, his travails at Harvard, and his business ventures in South America. After a failed marriage and the trauma of a broken family, Plumb charts his path to self-discovery, self-realization, and, finally, fulfillment.

I chose to read The Satisfied Introvert in the hopes it would offer me some insight into how to better support any children I teach who might be withdrawn and introverted. I did gain that, but so much more too. Plumb has written a page-turner which one moment would have me smiling and the next brushing away a tear. His honesty and openness are disarming in places. I thoroughly enjoyed the accounts of life in Brazil, Panama, and Argentina, as well as Plumb’s recollections of historical events which I had also experienced. Plumb’s style of writing is straightforward and matter-of-fact, with the description being there to paint an accurate picture, rather than for its own sake. The memoir will appeal to a broad audience. The Satisfied Introvert is courageous and uplifting - do yourself a favor and read it!

Reviewed by Tammy Ruggles for Readers' Favorite

Soulwork: Connecting with the Universe and your Spiritual Path to Find your True Purpose in Life, by Elizabeth Radcliffe, is an inspiring and informative self-help book to assist you in developing your spiritual well-being and maximizing your potential. Religion and science often clash on what reality is. Is it something that takes faith to understand or sheer facts? The author thinks the truth is something of both. Most people feel the need to question their existence--who are we, where do we come from, where are we going? For those who believe in the spiritual side of things (or even if you don't), this author can help guide you to a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you through a process she calls Soulwork.

Just like a doctor or therapist asks patients and clients to do exercises and work at home to improve themselves, Radcliffe asks readers to be open-minded and engage in thought patterns that can benefit their mind, body, and especially the soul. The head/heart connection is accurate, and most people would like to have them in a closer relationship. Yes, spiritual wellbeing can be improved upon, and I like how the author explains more. She shows you how with examples, exercises, and prompts for deeper examination. If you've ever felt the need to be more at one with yourself and the spiritual realm or dig deeper into who you are as a person, this guide may be a great and powerful tool. I also like that Radcliffe doesn't ask you to give up your own established beliefs, if you have them, to learn from her book. Some terms may sound new to you: unseen spirit guides, the Universe, energy, Beginner's Mind, Tai Chi fist, Emotional Release, to name a few.

This spiritual journey uses Soulwork to heal old soul wounds and allows your gifts to shine. Soulwork will help remove the barriers that you may have erected. Once these barriers are gone, you can live a fuller life. You'll read how music affects your soul, how your energy is like the sun, and how guardian angels work in your life. My favorite concept is to recognize and embrace "love yous in disguise," which means caring gestures that you may label as a potential negative, like lecturing by parents. And the opposite, "love mes in disguise," which are the times you may act out negatively but are seeking love and validation underneath. You may or may not agree with every point in the book, and the author doesn't ask you to. For a fresh perspective on your soul and how to have a stronger relationship with the Universe, consider diving into Soulwork: Connecting with the Universe and your Spiritual Path to Find your True Purpose in Life by Elizabeth Radcliffe.