Her storyline mirrored a lot of Sally’s in book one in terms of being sick and snappish because of her illness. Ellen spends a lot of time thinking about how much her parents have had to scrape and save to afford to send her to the school, and the stress of making sure she does as well as she can makes her sick.

This is probably one of the few times that any sort of specific diversity is mentioned in the books. There was somewhat less questionable parenting/pastoral care in this book than in book one, but I did wonder about their approach to Ellen, the second new girl and the first scholarship student mentioned in the book. I wondered if this was the book where Alicia finally learned to be kinder for good, but apparently that comes later. She is an artist, and used primarily as a plot device to demonstrate Alicia’s personality failings rather than for any character development in her own right.

The first new character, Belinda, is another scatterbrain to match up with Irene (because scatterbrains can only be friends with other scatterbrains, and all scatterbrains are also geniuses). This was because some new characters got introduced (jettisoning the infamous Violet, who was mentioned precisely once in book one with the disclaimer that everyone forgot about her because she was always so quiet, and then never mentioned again), and they took up a bit more of the narrative time. I was delighted by that unexpected twist when I read the first book, however there wasn’t actually a huge amount in book two. Mam’zelle Dupont is still trying to be strict, Alicia plays a terrible trick with invisible chalk and Gwendoline and Daphne inevitably get into trouble.Ĭoming back to Malory Towers a good few months after reading the first one, I was ready and braced for more decent Darrell/Mary-Lou shipping. Darrell, Sally, Gwedoline, Mary-Lou and all the other girls from First Term at Malory Towers are now in the second form and they are all as lively as ever.

The second form at malory towers