The Sapphire Widow by Dinah Jeffries Review

Hey ForeverBookers, 

I’ve just finished perhaps my favourite standalone novel EVER!!! I don’t love standalone novels because I often think they’re over too quickly but this one, although it did still leave me wanting more, it had a great and packed story. I often think that standalones are a waste of time because I’m only just getting invested when I’ve finished. However, that wasn’t the case with “The Sapphire Widow.” by Dinah Jeffries. It’s also published as “The Tea Planter’s Secret” by the same author and is sooooooo good!!!! It’s an adult historical fiction set in 1935. While the novel did go FAR beyond my expectations there were still a couple of things that I would have liked added to the plot. 

5 STARS!!!

I read “The Sapphire Widow” for many readathons again...

* Reading Rivalry - Book featuring a taboo subject - Betrayal and lying.
* Reading Rivalry - A book set in the 1930’s (the timeframe of Wicked, the musical of my group). The Sapphire Widow is set in 1935. 

* Fiction Feud Society - for the game of Clue - Knife - thriller/mystery. It’s a mystery in that we get a big reveal and are trying to work out how that happened. 

* Litwits - Forbidden Love - I’d say that there are two forbidden loves.

* Literary Love Affair - Trees On The Cover - On all versions of this book I believe there are trees on the cover, according to Goodreads anyway. 

* Popsugar Reading Challene 2019 - “a book with an item of clothing or accessory on the cover” - the girls dress!

* mARCh-a-thon - This is my own little readathon where I’m trying to get through as many arcs as I can in the month of March. This is my second, and it’s still only 8th March! I hope to read at least 5 arcs! Wish me luck!

There are SO many areas to the plot so if I don’t summarise them all, sorry. Just know that it’s still an amazing story that I think anyone can find something in, whether it’s purely for enjoyment, another book to add to your Goodreads Read stack, or hope! 

I however, wouldn’t advise this for anyone struggling through the loss of a baby, or maybe even wanting a baby soooo much, as that’s what our main character Louisa struggles with throughout. She’s had many failed pregnancies and a daughter that dies after child birth before the story begins. 

Louisa lives in historical Galle, Ceylon in Sri Lanka. She’s a well-off English immigrant. She lives out there with her husband, Elliot and her father, Christopher. These characters play big enough roles in the story but it’s mainly focused on Louisa. The novel is written in third person narrative, which I didn’t mind so much this time. I think it’s because we can see into the eyes of other characters, which in other third person novels that I’ve read, we don’t need to see. Here, we do to really get a grip of the events. 

“The Sapphire Widow” is really about accepting that with support you can overcome anything just by changing the way you view the world and people around you, and that nothing should stop you from trying to do what you want.  

NOTE: This is an adult novel as it explores the stigma surrounding women who can’t have children for one reason or another. There are love scenes too that are spread out over the novel. There is a story that's to do with death of a loved one as well as racism too. The novel is historical so that is to be expected. 

Spoilers below...

“Even after twelve years of marriage, she still thought him a truly handsome man.”

This is what Louisa thinks of her husband, Elliot at the beginning of “The Sapphire Widow.” What she doesn’t realise at this point is the giant secret he’s been keeping for years. 

“When had she died? Before or during the birth itself? To be born without life. What did it mean? These were the questions still haunting her.”

Here, Louisa is recollecting the birth of her and Elliot’s daughter, Julia and her quick death after birth. She doesn’t think it’s fair, which of course, it isn’t. All Louisa wants is a baby of her own. After this and her other miscarriages is this really too much to ask, she questions. This is why what Elliot has done hurts so much too! As to what he’s done, he’s already got a seven year old son, Conor! When Louisa finds this out she’s shocked beyond all belief! How dare he have a child with someone else, she thinks!

“Maybe next time I’ll come with you. A trip away; just the two of us.”

He didn’t reply.” 

Elliot doesn’t want her to come with him because she’ll discover his secret. Elliot knew about Conor, it’s revealed in the second half of “The Sapphire Widow.” He writes a letter to Zinnia, Conor’s mother, that he never sent, which Louisa discovers after his death. It explains his love for her and that he wants to be with her, instead of Louisa. When Louisa is told by Leo, our other main character, that he knew about Conor because he’s Zinnia’s cousin, she’s shocked. 

“But danger was Elliot’s addiction,” alludes to how nothing scares Elliot. He dies quite early on in the novel. I believe that he is the Sapphire Trader in one of the titles, as it’s him that has the huge secret. He dies in a car accident we learn in the first half of the story. We don’t ever uncover why he died though. That doesn’t really matter to the overall plot but it would have been nice to know. Was it his debts? Was it his other relationships, that are also hinted at? We just don’t know. Maybe we’re to come to our own conclusion.

I believe that “The Sapphire Widow” t is a book about moving on and about finding love again. The romantic elements were my favourite parts of the plot. I loved Leo, Louisa’s partner after the death of Elliot. 

“Something about the intense darkness of his eyes unsettled her.”

When Leo is introduced he’s a bit of a recluse because he lives at a tea plantation and doesn’t see many people day in, day out. This is what Louisa is referring to when she says his eyes unsettle her, I believe. He’s just not used to people. This is when Elliot is showing Louisa the plantation. The only people that Leo sees are Zinnia and Conor, his family, both of whom I mentioned above, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time with them at first. It’s Leo that tells Louisa of Elliot’s affair, after his death, as he thinks she deserves to know the truth. He knows because his sister told him. Of course she’s angry to begin with, who wouldn’t be? If I found out my husband had had a secret affair and a child as a result, I’d be livid! Louisa doesn’t think she’ll be able to see or be around Conor. He’s what she always wanted with Elliot. He should be her son, she thinks. But as the story progresses we see that Louisa accepts and learns to love Conor for who he is, and doesn’t care about who made him. 

“They had come a long way since those early days and, she had to admit, she really was beginning to think of the child as hers.”

I found this line sweet because it shows that Louisa has come to accept Conor as her own child. Zinnia dies during the novel leaving Conor motherless. All he’s got is Leo after her death. Does this bond between him and Louisa continue to grow or does it all come to a bad end? I desperately wanted Louisa to fall pregnant with Leo’s baby. Does this happen? You’ll have to read to find out. We never find out why Louisa couldn’t have children with Elliot. It obviously wasn’t because of him, as he has Conor. This isn’t expanded on, I think because at the time this is set, 1935 women just didn’t know why they couldn’t have babies. They just had to accept it and move on. Now, with all the technological advances we do have more of an idea as to why some women struggle to have children. 

Of course, there’s a romance in “The Sapphire Widow.” There are actually two for our main character but only one is focused on, which is good. When I read the blurb I thought that Louisa would have both men on the go at once but this is not the case, thank goodness! The main romance is between Louisa and Leo.  It was slowburn, which I’m not normally a fan of but this one came with a LOT of chemistry. I don’t normally like slowburn romance because I think they’re quite boring but because of the chemistry Louisa and Leo had together, I was all for this one. We could clearly see Louisa as she realised her feelings for Leo, as well as Leo’s feelings for her. 

“...but I also wanted to hear your voice.”

She smiled, happy. “It’s lovely to hear you too.”

“I...Well, what I mean is, that I’m looking forward to seeing you too. That’s all.”

“She felt the warmth curling inside her chest, and sensed that something that might change everything was on the verge of happening.”

Of course it’s their love that might or might not happen. Does it??? You’ll have to read to find out! 

Another big part of “The Sapphire Widow” is Irene, Elliot’s mother. She’s not always on the page but is there throughout, a bit like Margo, Elliot’s sister. Margo is always on Louisa’s side, more like her sister than Elliot’s, but Irene is a horrible woman. She’s always trying to put Louisa down and tell her she’s wrong, which isn’t true. Louisa is more right than Irene.

“When a husband strays, I blame the wife,”

“And by that you mean?”

“If you’d only had children...”

Louisa felt stunned. “So you blame me for his extramarital affair. And what about his debts? Were they my doing too.”

Irene shrugged.”

To be completely honest, I thought Irene was a vile woman and absolutely hated her! She’s the worst (as in most evil) antagonist I’ve come across in a non fantasy novel! The way she says “If you’d only had children...” leaving it open ended really made me angry. It’s like she wanted to rile Louisa! She’s just not a nice woman, and when she threatens to adopt Conor because he’s her grandson, Louisa feels it’s up to her to make sure that doesn’t happen! Where does Conor end up??? You’ll have to read to find out. 

There are other elements, like Elliot’s gambling debts and the building of an emporium to see the jewellery, which I wasn’t all that interested in. Luckily those bits were scattered in the main plot so it wasn’t all in one place. 

What did I like about “The Sapphire Widow?”

I LOVED the romance. I don’t normally like slowburn romance because I think it’s too slow but I don’t think instalove would have really worked because we needed to see Louisa get to know and trust Leo first before anything could happen between them. It would have been nice to have seen a little more but I’m happy with what we got.  

I loved the characters, even Irene (or how she was written anyway). They all had something different about them to make them stand out. The very minor characters weren’t focused on very much. I appreciated this. 

I felt very much on Louisa’s wavelength. I thought that I would have made the exact decisions that she did, throughout. I felt as if I was Louisa apart from how we look different!  

I loved the setting. It was great to read about a place that I didn’t know. I’ve never read about or studied Sri Lanka, so I wasn’t aware how different it was to the country where I live. The setting wasn’t largely focused on but what was there was interesting, like the plantation and beach scenes! Where I live the weather isn’t nice enough to have plantations or to go to the beach every other day.  

I liked how I felt about EVERY emotion while reading. I felt love, anger, resentment, hate, excitement, surprise and more. That’s really what we all want in a good novel, I think. I put the heart emoji next to the scenes that I considered love scenes, and I must have had over 50 by the end of the novel. The author was able to write all these emotions, while still keeping a flowing story.  

What didn’t I like about “The Sapphire Widow?”

There wasn’t really anything that I didn’t like, apart from something that I don’t want to spoil. The novel would have been perfect if this event had of happened but I understand why it didn’t because life is never perfect...even for book characters! That was the only thing that would have made this a beyond amazing book for me. It was amazing as it was. 

Therefore, I ADORED “The Sapphire Widow.” I highly recommend it if you love slowburn romance, books set in way off places (if you don’t already live in Sri Lanka), historical fiction that feels like it’s today you’re reading about, and just sweet stories that tug at your heartstrings. As I said above warning for talk of miscarriage and loss of children, however. 

Stand by for my next review, coming soon...