Tahima is a shy, thoughtful girl who has had a very easy childhood, brought up by liberal parents settled in Dubai. Faisal, her father owns a hotel and her beautiful, languid mother for some reason simply hates the sight of books. Though Tahima does not have to observe the old customs and
traditions, there are still limits to her freedom so that the only adventure she has to look forward to is marriage.

Tahima’s world falls apart the day Faisal tells her he is not her real father and that her real father had lived and died in Nainital, a beautiful hill town far away in India, leaving her a run-down house and desolate bookshop and a request that she should, at least once, visit Nainital, the place of her birth.

Whatever little she manages to find out about her father and his mysterious relationship with her mother, compels her to travel to Nainital. Venturing out alone for the first time in her life, she discovers a new world in the hills and falls in love with the place. She finds new friends, particularly Claire, the daughter of her late father’s friend Mr. Mathew. Tahima resolves to stay for a little while, to re-open her father’s bookshop. She meets Sulaiman, who comes to work with her at the shop, and falls in love with him. Her shy hesitant love for him grows stronger with each passing day and although Suleiman seems as distant as the hazy heights of the Himalayas, she does not care at first because she is happy to be in love.

But Tahima learns that happiness is nothing but the shadow of the clouds that fly away when her dreams are shattered by a shocking revelation from the past that the man she loves is none other than the son of a woman who had an illicit passionate affair with her dead father.

Tahima’s love for Sulaiman is played out against the backdrop of her new life in the hills. She discovers more about her father and the sad relationship he had with her mother and is faced with the complexity of other’s lives and emotions. She has to deal with her conflicting emotions for Faisal, the man who had brought her up with so much love and contend with the surge of feeling for
her dead father, a man she never knew existed but who had compelled her to come to Nainital to discover the happiness freedom and can bring for a woman as well as the courage to make her own choices in life.