“Stories such as The Heart Specialist remind us how far we have come... [Dr. Maude Abbott’s] career remains inspiring for me as it has for many.”

– UHN Reads

"I can pay a book no higher compliment than to say I didn’t want it to end. With The Heart Specialist, I rationed my reading, permitting myself only a few chapters at a sitting so as to savour the writing and the story."

– The Montreal Gazette

"The Heart Specialist offers something for nearly everyone. Montrealers will delight in the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Montreal, which is a palpable presence throughout the book. Yet others will be drawn to the depiction of a pioneering woman’s struggle. Mystery lovers will revel in the slowly unveiled secrets, and romantics will discover at least a little of the stuff of dreams. Some will find the best thing of all: a book we look forward to turning the pages of, remembering where we last left off."

– Montreal Review of Books

"The Heart Specialist is a fascinating novel that conveys both a sense of history and of the timelessness of human emotions. That Rothman also demonstrates the damage that prejudice can do, and the power of the human spirit in overcoming it, is simply an added bonus."

– The Quill & Quire

"The novel is ably researched and written, with never an ungraceful sentence."

– The Globe and Mail

"Rothman has done a wonderful job of weaving historical facts with literary convention to create a compelling novel."

– Ottawa (X)press, Hour

“Rothman is sensitive to atmosphere, conversation and female sentiment, evoking Jane Austen or the Brontës. …”

– Literary Review of Canada

"Told with precision, grace, and passion, The Heart Specialist is a beautiful, moving, utterly captivating novel about a woman who becomes one of Montreal’s first female doctors. The writing is striking, the emotion immediate, the medical detail fascinating and the story compelling from the first page to the last. Claire Holden Rothman deserves a wide audience for this astounding literary achievement."

– Lawrence Hill - author of 'The Book of Negroes'

"The Heart Specialist is an electrocardiogram of a novel. Claire Holden Rothman sensitively traces the peaks and valleys experienced by a woman breaking though the formidable gender barriers of early twentieth-century medicine. Her Dr. Agnes White is a fascinating character, an anomaly in her time, an authority on the human heart who knows so little of the workings of her own. I ached for her."

– Caroline Adderson - author of 'Pleased to Meet You'