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The Swallow & The Hummingbird - review

‘Romantics will adore this story of yearning love.’
Daily Express

‘One of our personal favourites and bestselling authors, sweeping stories of love and families spanning continents and decades.’
Times

The Sunday Express, March 2004
by Wendy Holden

Some years ago I spent an Easter holiday transfixed by a 3-part TV adaptation of a Rosamunde Pilcher novel. Cherishing as I do the memory of this televisual treat, I was delighted to discover that the SWALLOW AND THE HUMMINGBIRD presses many of the same buttons.

Here again is the romantic windswept Cornish setting, the lovers parted by the cruel hand of war, the jolly younger sister, the coming to terms with terrible injury, plus a good many elements exclusive to Montefiore including a walnut-obsessed farmer and a witch.

Montefiore, whose mother is part-Argentinian, usually manages to set some part of each novel in South America. Cue lots of sunshine and empanadas and also the icily beautiful. The novel displays all Montefiore’s hallmarks: glamorous scene-setting, memorable characters, and as always deliciously large helpings of yearning love and surging passion.