Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh: A Book Review

Teenage me would have made this book my entire personality. Adult me finished it in nine days and felt every single one of them.

Synopsis

Binding 13 is the first book in Chloe Walsh’s Boys of Tommen series, set in Ireland. Shannon Lynch arrives at the prestigious Tommen College mid-year, hoping for a fresh start and trying to keep her head down. Johnny Kavanagh is the school’s star rugby player: popular, talented, and heading somewhere. He has no business being distracted by the quiet new girl with the sad eyes. What follows is a slow-burn romance navigating first love, family dysfunction, bullying, and the particular agony of two teenagers who absolutely refuse to say what they mean to each other, for about 600 pages (though I listened to the audiobook version that totalled almost 26 hours!)

My review

The characters are well-drawn, genuinely likeable, and believable in the way that good YA characters are. Walsh’s strength lies in her characters rather than her prose. Shannon and Johnny feel real, as does their chemistry. I clung on through the whole thing, genuinely wanting to know how it would play out.

And yet…Nine days. Twenty-five hours and fifty-one minutes of audio across two parts.

Binding 13 is an exercise in extended misunderstanding:

• Shannon won’t tell Johnny how she feels.
• Johnny won’t tell Shannon how he feels.

A miscommunication occurs. They pull apart. The tension rebuilds. Repeat.

I understand that nervous teenagers navigating first love is exactly the point, and Walsh writes that hesitation with real authenticity. But by the fourth or fifth cycle, I had stopped feeling the ache and started feeling the length. There were moments when I wanted to reach into my headphones and shake both of them.

That frustration is, in its own way, a sign that the story was working. You only shout at characters you care about. But there is a difference between earned slow burn and slow burn that has outstayed its welcome, and somewhere in the second half of Part One, this tips into the latter.

The writing itself is functional rather than literary, which is actually a relief given the length. Ornate prose on top of nearly 26 hours of audio would have been exhausting. Walsh keeps things moving, and that’s the right call for a story this size.

The audiobook narration by Jacqueline Milne and Matthew Forsythe is solid, the Irish accents are well handled, and the switching between Shannon and Johnny’s perspectives feels natural. It was easy to listen to, even when the story was testing my patience.

Here’s the thing: this is a book for a specific reader, and I am not that reader anymore. If you are under 25, in the thick of first love or recently out of it, still carrying the particular ache of wanting someone who won’t just say it back: this book will wreck you in the best possible way.

If you are older than that, you may find yourself sympathetic but slightly cold. That’s not a flaw in the book. It’s just where you are (and me, hi there!).

What I liked / what I didn’t

What I liked

Shannon and Johnny are genuinely well-developed characters: likeable, believable, and drawn with enough complexity that you stay invested. The Irish setting is woven in naturally rather than used as decoration. The emotional stakes feel real, and the family dynamics, particularly around Shannon’s home life, add real weight to the story beyond the romance. The writing is functional rather than literary, which is actually a relief given the length; ornate prose on top of 26 hours of audio would have been too much.

What I didn’t

The slow burn goes on for a long time. A very long time. The repetitive cycle of near-misses and misunderstandings wears thin well before the end, and at nearly 26 hours across both parts, the audiobook tests patience in a way the story’s emotional payoff doesn’t quite justify for an adult reader. This is a book that would benefit from being about 30% shorter.

Final verdict

Binding 13 is an emotionally earnest YA romance that does exactly what it sets out to do, but it just does it for considerably longer than necessary.

The characters are its greatest strength, and if you are the right age for this book, it will absolutely ruin you in the way only first-love fiction can.

But I would not recommend it to anyone over 25, even someone who loves romance. It is simply too young, and too long, for that reader.

If someone under 20 came to me looking for their next romance, though? I would throw this book at them and not look back.

Where can I read it?