Binding 13

Yes — plan on it. Keeping 13 picks up immediately where Binding 13 leaves off, and the two are best treated as one continuous story rather than two separate books. Readers and reading-order guides consistently describe them as a package deal, so it is worth having the second book to hand before you start the first.

It sits on the line, and is usually shelved as new adult. The protagonists are secondary-school students in their mid-teens and the book charted on young-adult bestseller lists, but it contains explicit sexual content and graphic, sustained depictions of domestic abuse, and is generally rated 17+. Readers looking for a gentler YA romance should know what it contains before starting.

Publication order is the recommended reading order: Binding 13, Keeping 13, Saving 6, Redeeming 6, Taming 7, then Releasing 10. The books follow different couples from the same Tommen friend group and overlap in time, so reading out of order spoils earlier arcs — in particular, Binding 13 and Keeping 13 should both be read before Redeeming 6.

It is set in Ballylaggin, a fictional town in County Cork, Ireland — the author's own county — in the early 2000s. Tommen College, the prestigious private school Shannon transfers into, is also fictional. The rugby, hurling and Cork vernacular around them are drawn from the real place.