What do readers think of The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies? Write your own review.

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.

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.

Easy read, easy mystery to solve, while hoping to discover a complex character in the Tea Farmer's Wife.

To me, this book was like a romance novel which is not my favorite genre. It's about an Englishwoman and her marriage to an Englishman who owns a tea plantation in Ceylon which is where the story takes place. She tries to fit in with her new life and her new surroundings. I felt it is somewhat formulaic with other books of this type. Of course her husband and she both have a secret that is revealed and confessed at the end of the book. Then there are the typical characters: the trusted servant, the jealous sister-in-law, the hostile plantation overseer, the beautiful business woman and the mysterious handsome native. The story did have a twist to it which kept my attention for awhile until I got bored and jumped to the last chapter to get the revelation. There were some interesting parts about historical events in Ceylon and the processing of tea. I am a tea drinker so I enjoyed reading that. As an aside, while I was reading, I spilled a pot of tea on the book. How ironic! I think that people who like reading this type of story will enjoy it and the cover says that it was an international best seller. It just wasn't my cup of tea. Ha!

The Tea Planter's Wife started off with great promise. The first few chapters were fascinating and began to weave an intricate and mysterious story. However, the writing became repetitive and I found myself scanning the paragraphs to find the thread of the story throughout the constant descriptions of feelings and worries. Gwen would be strong and then unbelievably weak. Her strength would return, but she would fall victim to yet another problem and seemed to never have a plan. Could she trust no one? She repeated the phrase "pulled a face" so often that I began waiting for it to appear. The beginning of the book and the last chapter made for a great story. The telling of it was dragged out and, for me, ruined the story.