A review by slim_oysterhiatus
The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies

2.0

Not a bad book, with shakespearean levels of convenient relationships and almost unbelievable coincidences, but I did have to force myself to finish it. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters. The plot is full of secrets between characters, most easily figured out long before actually revealed, and the overly prolonged suspense is infuriating. Too many sex scenes, and we never do learn why Laurence always hated Savi. Of course it is a tragic story, but there is never a felicitous event throughout the storyline; all the characters are miserable hiding their sides of the secrets, and the descriptions of their melancholy and their reserved, taciturn relationships with each other is relentless.