Heart and Soul

I am a BIG Maeve Binchy fan, but this one is dreadful - there are way too many characters, the story is disjointed, some characters are never developed and it goes no-where. Maeve - what were you thinking? By-pass this one is my recommendation. Sorry Maeve.

As a big fan of Maeve Binchy, I have to say this was not one of her best books in my opinion. Too many characters were introduced and too few of them were developed enough. She kept throwing in names/characters from her previous novels where it really wasn't necessary. I'm a little annoyed that I paid 2 tokens for this book. Not worth it.

I agree with all of what other reviewer's have stated. I have not read any other Maeve Binchy books. And after reading these reviews, I wonder why I don't pay more attention to them beforehand.

The story as uneven. Many, many characters. It goes into detail about this priest's situation even though I would not have considered him a main character. The detail about Anya, even with her being more of a main character, went on for far too long. The twin's travels to Greece adding nothing to Fiona's issues, and it should have. Even more importantly, I do NOT get why the twins had to sond like robots!? The obnoxious woman had a role that should have been more suited to the mother of the bride or groom.

Altogether the narration was odd. As said, sometimes it was Irish, sometimes it was not. It did get confusing. The Polish was too thick. I did not find it easy to distinguish between the characters, but that was partly because there were too many.

Listen if you want, but I would not put mch stock into it. It makes me wonder if I should try another one of this author's books. Definitely I will avoid the nrrator.

this should have been an easy and charming book to listen to. Sile Bermingham, however, ruined it for me.

First of all, puzzlingly, she reads in an American accent for all the Irish characters.

Much worse than that is her "Polish" accent which is so stilted, incorrect and just UGLY that I found it impossible to listen to. Also a pair of twins show up that talk exactly like robots! Why???

I turned it off after a few hours. I couldn't keep on having my ears assaulted. it's too bad...

I can always count on Maeve Binchy to tell a heart warming story. I gave her 5 stars, but the narrator just 3 stars, hence the 4 star rating.

there was absolutely no plot to this book whatsoever--just a bunch of random characters' stories woven around a thin location. Long, rambling stories that lead you no where. Very disjointed, I got confused in the middle of the novel when it diverts to some hackneyed story about a priest. All of the characters' issues wrap up too neatly and it makes Dublin look like Hayseed, Iowa. If I was Irish, I'd be a bit offended by this quaint village show she puts on. I liked her other novels but this one just DRAGGED.

I can always count on Maeve Binchy's books to be enjoyable listens full of characters and charming narration. This book, while not one of her best, was still fun to listen to though I have preferred other Binchy audiobook narrators over this one.

The story was not one of her best. It was pretty predictable. The reader was not up to par either. Sometimes she used an Irish accent and other times it faded. Also, it was read a bit slow. I probably would have like it better in general if it had be read better.

The narrator lisps. If you can tolerate "s" being pronounced "th", go for it.

The story sounded interesting in the summary description and although I never read Maeve Binchy I like stories about medicine (I'm a nurse and my husband's a physician) and I often find stories about my husband's family homeland charming and fun. However, after just 45 minutes, I realized this is a "He said/She said" book in the style of romantic novels and I prefer to spend my time reading or listening to books that are well-written and worthy of the description "great literature." So sorry, this one's not for me.