Another very nice Malory Towers continuation novel, true to the style and spirit of Enid Blyton's books. This follows the usual formula, but I'm not going to hold that against it since Blyton's books are formulaic to begin with.

New girl Esme was a bit too similar to Zerelda. Perhaps we are running into the limitations of the boarding school tropes; after a good number of books the writer starts to repeat herself. Esme's family feud with Lucy and the vandalism, horse stealing plot in Bill and Clarissa's stable were a bit slow in the beginning, but they did get more interesting.

I still appreciate how in these Pamela Cox continuation novels the characters are a bit more nuanced than in Blyton's Malory Towers books. Characters who with Blyton would be antagonists here usually have more going for them. ( )

Picnics, horses, swimming - fun in the summer term, with the usual Blyton clichés (tricks, etc). Enjoyed this BUT Cox always introduces a longer plot in her books (as opposed to Blyton's juxtaposition of vignettes of various events) and this takes up the majority of the second part of the novel. It's good if the plot is solid but here, her attempt at mystery was really long-winded. I'm glad the book was short. Still great fun, despite the odd anti-Americanism of the book. ( )