The Unforgettable Fifth at Trebizon

Trebizon #14

by Anne Digby

Long summer days, the Commemoration Ball ... picnics and sailing in Mulberry Cove. The end of the GCSE year looks set to be unforgettable as Rebecca plans her French pen friend's return visit. Bun in a term full of dramatic happenings, nothing could be stranger then the way Emmanuelle behaves. Could everything they have shared really be lost? Rebecca can't believe that, whatever Tish and the others might think ...

Genres: School Stories, Childrens

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Anne Digby is a popular British children's author, best known for her fourteen-book Trebizon series, set at a large boarding school. In addition to her own Trebizon books, Digby has contributed new volumes to Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl series.

Reviews

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My claim to fame in the world of children's literature is that I chatted to Anne Digby about this book before it was published. She revealed (with understandable excitement) that there was a Proper Kiss at last; and she also acknowledged that it would not be possible to follow Rebecca into the sixth form, so she was wondering where to go next. I half-heartedly suggested some retrospective stories about Pippa as a younger pupil but, quite wisely, Anne moved instead onto the Naughtiest Girl sequels.

Anyway, a superb ending to the series. There is *so much* going on that it's hard to keep up - GCSE term is like that - and everything is resolved beautifully in the end. I will miss Rebecca and her friends, and although I understand why the series had to end here, I do wish we could have had more books about their final two years at school. They became very real to me over the course of the series - I wonder what they are all doing now?

[Joanna b · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wanted to reread this for about 22 years but it's been out of print, making the few copies available far too expensive. I love this series but not £100 a book love it. Last night I realised that there was an inexpensive kindle version available and immediately bought and read the whole thing. There's one more crisis where the school needs to be saved (what is that school going to do after the six main characters have left and can't save it any more?) and Rebecca's romantic dilemma is finally resolved.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly decent ending to the series, though I've no idea why Digby didn't continue writing up until the sixth form and them actually leaving Trebizon. I would have read it to the end. Rebecca's "romantic dilemma" is solved - although she's been so half-hearted about both boys that I wasn't super emotionally involved in it. I was more interested in her exam results. The only down note is that it ends with everyone getting their results at home instead of everyone being together, which I know is just the way things are in real life, but also felt underwhelming.

And it felt odd that Rebecca's big passions - literature and tennis - have both receded from the picture. I was okay with the tennis, as that was a very deliberate decision she made, but it felt odd that she wasn't even considering studying literature at A-level. And though there's an off-hand comment at the end that she should write more poems and that she might try out for Editor of the Trebizon Journal (an entity not even mentioned in the previous few books), literature had been so missing from her life that it just felt like a throwaway.

Still, I'm glad to have been able to follow these characters after reading the first book like 20+ years ago. The books from when Rebecca et al were juniors were the best though.

[Nicolle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m so glad I decided to re-read this series including the new additions I bought to complete my collection that I hadn’t read before. It reminds me of my youth and living in England, although I never went to a boarding school, I lived vicariously through these books. I didn’t rate many of the books more than a 3 because of the reading level, but for love for the series and memories it’s a 5 stars.
This last book filled me with a sense of melancholy, knowing it wasn’t her last year at the boarding school I wonder why the author decided to stop it where she did... I would have kept reading, but was satisfied with the ending anyways.

[Kirsty Darbyshire]

I read the first titles in this series in the early 80s, then discovered the last few on Kindle a couple of years back - the details are all on my write up of Fourth Year Triumphs at Trebizon if you want the gory details! I left the last one in the series for a rainy day that didn't arrive until I was stuck without a signal to download a new book on my Kindle and discovered I had this lurking about unread.

I'm kind of sorry to have reached the end of the series - there are no "Sixth Form at Trebizon" books as far as I can see and I've not been interested by any of the "Chalet Girls Get Divorced" type of books there are around so I don't think I'd pick up a third party one anyway. I'm happy to leave my childhood friends as they were! It wasn't a great end to the series, the writing seemed much worse in this one than I remembered - far too much foreboding over very little and the plot seemed very much on the level of a bad romance novel in many ways (I'm not an expert of those either though) but I was pleased to be able to leave Rebecca and her friends on a happy note, and glad the author hadn't decided to fill in a "what all the characters did next" bit for us. The characters are pretty much my contemporaries, albeit much more privileged ones, and I know what they've been doing from sixteen to forty and beyond, I'm happy to leave them be now.

[Emma Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread in February 2019. I've got nothing more to say than my original review below, posted in 2012. It's a great series and I highly recommend it.
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The five stars are both for the book (so glad Emmanuelle had a valid reason for her behaviour, I liked her and Cliff was so well-handled) and really for the series as a whole. I can't tell you how outstanding this is. I really fell in love with this series - it's got great characters who accomplish so much and whom you really want to root for, great plots, beautiful setting and it just felt like family after 14 books. Digby really gets what makes a boarding school experience so special. In a way it's good that she never finished the series, I feel like the end of this book had every question answered - Rebecca finally knew where she was going both in her private (I think that 'I'll always be cheering you on, whatever it is you decide you want to do' is an awesome summary of their relationship and I'm so glad Robbie told her that) and student life and I couldn't be happier if she were my own best friend. Truly excellent series of books, I absolutely long to reread them already.

[Tianne Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad it had to end.

After following all the years we cut the story short before we find Rebecca's full future. Pen friends have fun and plenty of other twists and mystery come in.

[Jo K Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whilst I love the whole series. I felt this really properly did not conclude Rebecca and her friend’s stories.

[Gemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this whole series. Read them as a child and only picked up the later ones more recently. I wish she'd written the 6th form stories too!