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There are currently 37 member reviews
for The Tea Planter's Wife
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Lesley F. (San Diego, CA)
Not Quite MY Cup of Tea
If you are a fan of Jane Austen's stories or romance novels, read no further. You KNOW you will love it!
The story takes place in colonial Ceylon from 1912 through 1934 - nearly the same timeline as Downton Abbey - as a young bride from England comes to her new husband's tea plantation on the island. There is love, romance, sex, jealousy, secrets, and treachery. The author has described the local atmosphere well.
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Harriette K. (Northbrook,, IL)
The Tea Planter's Wie
A very young bride arrives in Ceylon to join her new husband and take up residence on his tea plantation. His first marriage had ended in tragedy, and now we are faced with the uncovering off many secrets and mysteries. I wanted to like this book more than I did. Unfortunately, the mysteries weren't too mysterious. I had them figured out early on. I would have hoped that the author would have elaborated on the political situation a little more. It certainly would have added some interest to an extremely mundane narrative. The only reason I gave it a 3 instead of a 1 or 2 was that it did hold sufficient interest to finish.
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Alyce T. (San Antonio, TX)
The Tea Planter's Wife
For summer reading, it was OK. As an International Best Seller, I was disappointed. The plot was thin and had no mystery. Dinah Jefferies's characters also seemed to lack depth and feelings. Perhaps that is just the cool English stereotype reserve and I did not get it. I expected to learn more about tea cultivation and the country of Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka).
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Florence K. (Northridge, CA)
Tea Planter's Wife
I wanted very much to like this book. The premise was intriguing: a story about tea planting and picking in Ceylon in the early years of the twentieth century. As I read this historical novel, I really enjoyed the historical parts -- the caste system, the growing unrest among the poorer classes, the vast differences between the lives of masters and servants, the rampant brutality. As for the fiction part, I enjoyed that much less. The writing was overwrought, many of the characters stereotypical, and so many of the words and phrases repetitious. There were too many "tears filled his/her eyes" and "he/she pulled a face." Perhaps more stringent editing would have made this a better book.
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Susan B. (Rutledge, MO)
melodramatic and unfulfilling
Your mileage may vary, but I found the plot overly melodramatic and the characters (for the most part) unlikable, clueless and racist. I had hoped to learn about the culture of a country I know little about, but instead I learned colonial attitudes toward the culture. I particularly disliked how the author chose to conveniently (for the main character at least) wrap up her major plot point. Not including the spoiler here, but I found it appalling.
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Sandra H. (St. Cloud, MN)
Fascinating...But Frustrating
Set in Ceylon, Dinah Jeffries "The Tea Planter's Wife"begins with a short prologue dated 1913, while the rest of the novel takes place from 1925 through 1933, during the time when race and class differences dictated one's place in society to the beginning of unrest and change within the social structure of that society.
I found the novel both fascinating and frustrating. Jeffries does an excellent job of helping us picture Ceylon and the Sinhalese and Tamil who work for the British landowners. We learn the social obligations and the restrictions that govern those in charge as well as those who toil beneath them. I found this part of the novel fascinating. However too often the sometimes overwrought plot too often made it difficult to accept the various intricacies necessary to develop it. While Gwen, the main character, and her servant Naveena were fully developed, the secondary characters too often remained two-dimensional.
Nonetheless, I recommend "The Tea Planter's Wife" for taking me into a time and place that I know too little about. The novel shows how our perceptions of those who are "different," too often cause us to judge them as inferior beings.
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Dorothy D. (Litchfield Park, AZ)
Mindless Summer Read
Easy read, easy mystery to solve, while hoping to discover a complex character in the Tea Farmer's Wife.
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