Studies at the School by the Sea: The Fourth School by the Sea Novel (School by the Sea, 4)

While Jenny Colgan’s School by the Sea series hasn’t been out long (the first book of the four-part series was published in 2022), fans have been anxious to see how Scottish schoolteacher Maggie Adair’s story would conclude. The final book, Studies at the School by the Sea, does not disappoint.

When Maggie first began teaching at the tony Downey House, an English boarding school known for its gorgeous campus, excellent academic programs, and obscenely rich students, she felt wildly out of place. Now, in her fourth year, she has come to feel a part of the school and very much a part of the lives of her fourth year students: Alice, Fliss, Simone, and Isme.

Each girl has her own cross to bear: Alice is so rich that everything feels beneath her, Fliss wants desperately to fit in, Simone is a scholarship girl and feels she can never forget it, and Isme is a social justice warrior in a location that seems to suggest she wouldn’t be. As Maggie shepherds them through studying for their GCSEs, she also works through her new but engrossing relationship with David, a former Downey House teacher now relegated to a less prestigious school.

Maggie’s Scottish family, still smarting from her break up with her long-time love Stan, doesn’t accept David and worries he will take Maggie even farther away from them than she already is.

As the students study and Maggie struggles to know what she truly wants, Jenny Colgan delights with lines from famous novels and poems—Maggie is an English teacher, after all—and charming descriptions of the Scotland and England. Studies at the School by the Sea is a perfect wrap up to this darling story.