Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Comment: Classic comfortable read from a feel good author. The main character, Clara was inspiring. There are no huge dramas in this book but so much that we can all relate to in our ordinary lives. Maeve Binchy is at her very best when she describes family life and relationships. I would have liked her to show us more of Clara's final romance but nothing is perfect. Very well worth buying.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A comforting, satisfying read!
Comment: I love Binchy's books and eagerly awaited this one. I wasn't disappointed - soon I was back in her world of quirky Irish characters. I didn't want this to end and felt the book stopped a little too soon. I loved the reference to characters from past books and the overlapping lives, making me remember the characters as friends I'd met long ago and were happy to be re-acquainted with. Binchy weaves a colourful, vivid tale that I most thoroughly enjoyed. If you like character driven novels, this one is for you!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Heart and soul
Comment: I must admit that my favourite Maeve Binchy novel is Scarlet Feather so what joy to see how the twins are getting on. Still completing each others sentances. We meet new characters as well and they each have their own story. I like this format and I also like happy endings, so this book was a winner for me.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Too twee or not to twee that is the question?
Comment: I found this book had very little substance even the few dramas in it were quickly dispatched with. It was almost like a collection of short stories but with each one being interwoven with the next. As lovely as it is to always have happy endings (if only life was really like that) I found myself hoping for a bit of oomph and was disappointed.There are quite a few characters from previous novels in it and if you have not read these books then some of their stories wont mean a lot to you. When I think of the early Maeve Binchy books that I have enjoyed in the past I am afraid that lately her work has been a bit of a let down for me.
Don't get me wrong, if you like your books to be full of really nice people, even the only nasty one came round in the end, and predictable outcomes then you will enjoy this, but it really lacked an impact factor for me.
The competition of popular Irish women writers is too strong for Maeve to rest on her laurels and she should get back to the likes of "To Light a Penny Candle" and remind them and us of why she was the queen for so long.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Warm and real
Comment: It's something comforting about Maeve Binchy's books. The cliché about a book being like a good friend, is so very right in her case. Of course, one is interested in finding out what happens to the characters, but there is no hurry. In the case of this book, it is much more preferable to sit down with a cup of tea and read quietly a couple of hours before going to bed.
"Heart and Soul" is a book to be devoured and there are many actors on the stage in Dublin. First there is Clara Casey, senior cardiac specialist at a new heart clinic at St. Brigid's Hospital, Clara's two daughters Adi and Linda, who in their twenties are having trouble settling down and finally her ex-husband Alan, who is asking Clara for a divorce in order to marry a much younger woman.
Coming to work at the clinic is also Ania, a young girl who has travelled from Poland in order to mend a broken heart. Young Doctor Declan Carroll was originally meant to spend a six-month posting but meats beautiful nurse Fiona. And then there is Father Bryan Flynn, whose life is turned upside down when his reputation is threatened.
Extra spice is added when we also meet old friends from both Scarlet Feather, Evening Class, Nights of Rain and Stars and Whitethorn Woods. Nora who is still always called Signora & Aidan, and Brenda at Quentins, where Declan takes Fiona out to dinner for the first time.
"Heart and Soul" is a book about ordinary people with ordinary lives. Joy and sorrow, struggle and hopes. And as always, the author shows us the importance of the small things in life - which often do not prove so small after all.
Maeve Binchy is a wonderful storyteller, who has once again written a book which grows on the reader and is slowly creeping into our heart and soul.
Enjoy!
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