Summary from Goodreads:

A murder at a British boarding school in the hills of western India launches a young teacher on the journey of a lifetime

In 1974, three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, Charulata Apte arrives at Miss Timmins’ School for Girls in Panchgani. Shy, sheltered, and running from a scandal that disgraced her Brahmin family, Charu finds herself teaching Shakespeare to rich Indian girls in a boarding school still run like an outpost of the British Empire. In this small, foreign universe, Charu is drawn to the charismatic teacher Moira Prince, who introduces her to pot-smoking hippies, rock ‘n’ roll, and freedoms she never knew existed.

Then one monsoon night, a body is found at the bottom of a cliff, and the ordered worlds of school and town are thrown into chaos. When Charu is implicated in the murder—a case three intrepid schoolgirls take it upon themselves to solve—Charu’s real education begins. A love story and a murder mystery, Miss Timmins’ School for Girls is, ultimately, a coming-of-age tale set against the turbulence of the 1970s as it played out in one small corner of India.

My Review:

Let me just say that last year I may have overdosed a bit on books set in India.  Some were good, some were bad, but overall they seemed to have the same melancholy, morose feel to them and I promised myself I’d lay off of them for a while.

Then I signed up for this tour.  My first thought was, great, here we go again, but then I picked up the book and started reading and realized this was unlike any story set in India I’d read thus far.

The story of Charu was interesting enough – but add into the mix a murder mystery and the book takes on a new purpose and life of its own just when the story seems to start slowing down.  While I could have done without some aspects of the book, the murder mystery was quite well done and moved at a solid pace.

Nayana Currimbhoy did a beautiful job of crafting a story that had memorable characters, a good sense of mystery and thrill, and just enough emotion that it had my heart aching more than a few times for the emotions the characters were experiencing.

So, in short, I’m not sorry I picked up this story set in India, and if anything, I think its given me hope and the desire to seek out more stories like it.

About the Author

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from TLC Book Tours. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”