Adrienne and the Chalet School by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
There’s no escaping that Adrienne is, as a whole, a relatively poor book. It’s written with the tiredness that affects the end of the series, a sort of written by rote and necessity attitude that pervades the entire book.
So, we know our format by now, for it is one that is rarely deviated from. A new girl arrives at school; she has trials and tribulations, before ultimately becoming the ideal Chalet School Girl.
What is unique about this book, and sort of fascinating however, is the subplot involving Robin. Yes, that Robin who’s been farmed off many books ago to a Nunnery (‘Get thee to a nunnery!’) is back and she’s sort of turned into a Terminatrix nun. She rescues Adrienne from a life of dodginess (and awful faux-French accents), and sends her to the Chalet School.
There’s a further plot concerning Robin which I won’t spoil here, but to say it’s possibly one of the most audacious moments in the final books. It always struck me as hysterical upon the ‘listening to the revelations’ moment, one of the characters goes ‘Wow, you’d have thought that’s something you’d have read in a book, but gosh, look at that, this is real life’. It’s possibly the first and only point Brent-Dyer went all avant-garde and meta-textual on us.
Daisy May Johnson 
I was an avid reader of the Chalet School books as a child/young person. I think I have all but 12 of them in my possession, but Adrienne and the Chalet School is not one of them. Perhaps it’s just as well…!
You’re mainly missing out on a very tenuous plot involving the Robin – so not missing out that much really 😉