The Trebizon books are a series of boarding school stories (written pre-Harry Potter), which follow Rebecca Mason as she joins the second year of Trebizon school on the south-west coast of England. I picked up several books in the series when I first got my new Kindle for Christmas, as I remembered them fondly from when I discovered them when I was at school myself.

Having grown up with the standard diet of Enid Blyton school stories, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and so on, I was thrilled to discover (that first time around) that these school stories were bang up-to-date. Of course, in this day and age of laptops, tablets and smartphones, a duplicating machine and typewriter to publish a school magazine look rather dated, but when I first read the books, back in the 1980s when they were written, they were contemporary.

At the start of her second year of secondary school, Rebecca Mason's father receives an unexpected promotion which sees her parents suddenly moving to Saudi Arabia, but which means that Rebecca herself has to go to boarding school. They choose Trebizon, as the best school which has a reputation for turning out talented pupils. Unfortunately, this means a sudden relocation for Rebecca from her London comprehensive, her best friends and a place she has lived all her life to somewhere where she knows no-one and has to try and fit in when everyone else has already formed their friendships.

But Rebecca has a talent for writing, and she comes away from her introductory meeting with her new headmistress fired with an ambition for making her parents proud and getting an article into the golden jubilee edition of the school magazine, the famous 'Trebizon Journal'; which brings with it unexpected problems of its own ...

I found this a simple, straightforward school story perfectly suited for its target age. It feels as fresh and cohesive as it did when I first read it, all those years ago and - apart from obvious anachronisms - holds up well today.

(One minor quibble, though; there is a gate from the school grounds to the beach that any student can walk through to leave the school grounds - which presumably means that any member of the public could meander into the school unmonitored, too. This parent feels that it is a rather lax security.)

Fun to reread. I'll be continuing with the series.

4 stars ( )

This was so nice! I was craving a boarding school story and this met my needs beautifully. The characters are well fleshed-out for this type of novel, the friendships are really good and the plot was gripping. I really enjoyed reading about The Trebizon Journal and the girls' creativity and drive was inspiring. Tish was my favourite character. I'm so happy I found this series, it's exactly the kind of school adventure I was looking for. ( )