Wonderful, meaningful holiday read! Moving, inspirational. A story of love and soulmates. Unmissable. Tess Thorne, Waterstone's Cardholder

From all the Coelho books this has to be my favourite! It`s a moving and wonderful tale of love, destiny, passion and magic.

A quick, easy and lovely tale of love, mystery and spirituality. Brida- a young beautiful Irish girl - sats out on a journey for knowledge. Through her journey she makes a self discovery. At the end she has to balance between relationship and the desire to transform herself. She discovers her soulmate.

well researched shows that religion/spirituality is for all flowing through life rather than being an aspect of it.

I've read The Alchemist- twice- and thought that, generally, Coelho points out some very good lessons to pursue on life's road, albeit in a simplistic way. It did have it's charm, though. The Fifth Mountain, a re-telling of a biblical character Elijah, also had some important insights to pass on to the reader. Unfortunately, I found hardly any of these traits in Brida. Rituals were mentioned but never explored, the protagonist as well as the other characters were two- dimensional and uninteresting, and by the end you're left wondering what it was all about. A small redeeming feature could have been a scientific explanation for deja vu/ reincarnation/ personal chemistry which Coelho did touch on, but failed to explore further. Disappointing.