The Heart of a Vicar

By: Sarah M. Eden

Narrated by: Luone Ingram

Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Young love is all too fleeting, as Harold Jonquil painfully discovered years ago when Sarah Sarvol, the niece of a neighboring landowner, captured his heart. After an idyllic few weeks in the throes of blossoming love, reality intervened. They could have no future. Following their disastrous parting, Harold attempted to push aside thoughts of love and regret, but Sarah has never left his heart. Now, years later, he has achieved his lifelong aspiration of becoming the local vicar. However, the role proves more difficult than he imagined. He feels hollow and uninspired - until the most important person in his past returns, challenging him as no one ever has.

When Sarah’s ailing uncle summons her back to the family estate in England, there is only one person from her past she is reluctant to see again: Harold Jonquil, the only man who has ever claimed her heart. But when she comes face-to-face with her former beau, she hardly recognizes the aloof and dull man before her. She is determined to help Harold rediscover the passion he once felt toward his chosen profession. Soon, despite their exasperation with each other, they cannot deny the stirring of feelings long buried - but is it too late for second chances?

©2019 Covenant Communications, Inc. (P)2019 Covenant Communications, Inc.

Wonderful story

Difficult topics handled with care! I was really glad that some of these more personal and intimate situation were brought to light, Russian. And I enjoyed the laughs throughout. Sarah and Aiden is great at comic relief

Amazing!

This chapter of the Jonquil family is as heartwarming as ever. I love how each book interweaves all family members, yet brilliantly fleshes out a particular brother. This book does not disappoint and endears us to Harold aka Holy Harry.☺️

Wonderful.

Beautiful story, exceptional narration. I loved it! The narrator' voice, volume levels, expression is awesome, truly the best I've heard, and I've listened to hundreds of audio books.
This is as close to perfect as it gets. I've listened to all the books about the Jonquil brothers. This is my favorite series, bar none.

Loved it. Can not wait for the next book.

I wonder if the next book will be about Sarah's bother Scott. That would be good.

Sweet Story

Very nice commentator. It was nice to watch Holy Harry come into his own and realize he always had the deepest respect among his family all along.

Beautiful Story!

Absolutely wonderful! I listened to the audio book and it was beautifully narrated.

I wasn't sure if I was going to be very interested in this story when I was preparing to get started listening to it. Harry Jonquil had not impressed me as much more than someone whom the brothers would occasionally make quips about. Being "Holy Harry" seemed little more than a quirky type of character in the previous novels. There were a couple of times that I glimpsed that there might be more to him, but I had no idea how interesting and heartwarming his story was going to be!

I liked that it was a second chance at love story. Having his Sarah return and call him out on how much he had changed and pretty accurately point out that he was not doing a very good job of being a vicar was incredibly heartbreaking for him. He tried to be the best vicar that he knew how. The problem was that he was trying to be an ideal of who he thought a vicar should be, while hiding who he truly was. He was also a shell of a man, left over from the heartbreak of losing Sarah, and that impacted the way he interacted with others, too.

This story was very impactful and involved quite a few of the other Jonquil relations. I was happy that every one of them appeared at some time in the novel. There were some extremely beautiful moments in this story.

Missing one thing

I enjoyed the narration and the plot of this book, but I found it fascinating that the author could write a story about a vicar with doubts and never mention a prayer or a conversation with God. How does a man of faith not cry out to God when feeling lost. Instead he talked to his mother, house keeper, a pub full of guys, and even his dead father. But, alas, not God. Perhaps that was Harry's real problem.

Lovely!

WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Young love is all too fleeting, as Harold Jonquil painfully discovered years ago when Sarah Sarvol, the niece of a neighboring landowner, captured his heart. After an idyllic few weeks in the throes of blossoming love, reality intervened. They could have no future. Following their disastrous parting, Harold attempted to push aside thoughts of love and regret, but Sarah has never left his heart. Now, years later, he has achieved his lifelong aspiration of becoming the local vicar. However, the role proves more difficult than he imagined. He feels hollow and uninspired—until the most important person in his past returns, challenging him as no one ever has.

When Sarah’s ailing uncle summons her back to the family estate in England, there is only one person from her past she is reluctant to see again: Harold Jonquil, the only man who has ever claimed her heart. But when she comes face-to-face with her former beau, she hardly recognizes the aloof and dull man before her. She is determined to help Harold rediscover the passion he once felt toward his chosen profession. Soon, despite their exasperation with each other, they cannot deny the stirring of feelings long buried—but is it too late for second chances?

MY TAKE
I love the Jonquils and have since the first time I met them. Those brothers can be such dunderheads, but when something comes up they are all there to support each other. I loved learning about Harry, especially how different his outside persona was compared to what was really going on. I LOVED Sarah. She was perfect for him, loving and kind, the perfect wife for a vicar.

There are lots of scenes with siblings and spouses. It was wonderful to get to see them again and to see that real life doesn't stop just because you marry your life. Life is hard but that doesn't mean it's not still wonderful. Sometimes it's wonderful because of those hard moments.

Lovely, lovely addition to the series. Can't wait to see Charlie's tale.

Lived it!

It was fun getting to know Harry. He always seemed to be in the background of the other stories. His childhood Sweetheart Sarah, is such a darling girl. so full of happiness even when things are bad. It was good to see them have their own happy ending.

Another wonderful story

Story: 5 stars

A wonderful (continuing) story of a family and each of the 7 son’s romances. One left to go! I don’t want the series to end!

Narrator: 3.5 stars
Luone Ingram did a truly wonderful job and I especially love her voicing of Sarah and Mater, as you could hear the cheerfulness in their voices. I was a bit disappointed, though, that her British accents were so subtle. Her Scottish accent for the doctor and her lower-class cockney-sounding accents were pretty good to my (admittedly untrained) ear. But the accents of the nobility lefty a bit to be desired.

That said, when I let go of the accent issue, I thought she did a lovely job of narrating/voicing the book.

*poor, **ok, ***good, ****very good, *****something special