Althea's parents are going abroad, so she's sent to the Chalet School. This is the penultimate book in the series - number 57 in the original hardbacks - and, unusually, it covers just half a term.

On the whole, it's a run-of-the-mill school story about how Althea settles in. Pleasant enough light reading for fans of the series, but not one I'd recommend as a starting point, nor for casual readers dipping into Chalet School books. ( )

The book {read in the Girls Gone By edition} seems to consist of two halves badly cemented together. It was one of the later books, and EBD was reaching the end of her life, so a little kindness is called for in reviewing what I felt to be a very disappointing entry in the Chalet series. ( )

Unfortunately, this title is extremely typical of the latter part of the CS series and is very formulaic. Also, even I couldn't help but notice the EBDisms, and given that I normally never notice any and actively don't want to know about them, they must have been glaring. At one point there has presumably been some bad editing and an entire incident is cut from the book. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't then immediately referred to, leaving you to recheck that you haven't just missed a page of text. It is a shame that the first half term of the triplets' last term at school is so poor handled. ( )