Young Love
10 Boys of Tommen Burning Questions We Need Answers After ‘Releasing 10’
It’s hard to explain the chokehold that the Boys of Tommen series has on fans to anyone who hasn’t gone through hell with Johnny Kavanagh, the Lynch family, and their friends in Chloe Walsh’s novels. While the series centers on teenagers, the dark subject matter requires a lot of maturity to engage with the material. These kids have been through so much, but the friendships and first loves that have been forged through and in spite of their respective traumas are legendary.
There are currently six books in the series. The first two, Binding 13 and Keeping 13, introduce us to the eponymous Boys of Tommen through the eyes of Shannon Lynch, who transfers to Tommen College in the middle of her third year after experiencing intense bullying at her previous school. As Shannon acclimates to her new school and steals the heart of rugby captain Johnny Kavanagh, readers get to know Johnny’s gang, including Gerard Gibson, Hugh Biggs, Patrick Feely, and Shannon’s closest friends, Claire Biggs and Lizzie Young. The next two books take readers on a tumultuous ride with Shannon’s older brother, Joey, and his girlfriend, Aoife (pronounced E-fa), who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders thanks to Joey and Shannon’s abusive father.
If fans thought they were going to be able to get a sigh of relief after Redeeming 6 (you know, after you sobbed your heart out, anyway), they were sorely mistaken. The fifth book, Taming 7, centers on Gerard and Claire, who have been best friends all of their life, but have struggled to cross the line to something romantic.
(Warning: Heavy spoilers for Taming 7 and Releasing 10 ahead.)
The book ultimately reveals that Gerard was assaulted by his older stepbrother, Mark. He’s been operating as the group’s comedic relief to cover up the grief and repressed trauma from his childhood. When the secret comes out, Gerard is finally able to get the help he needs to start a healing journey. However, it splits the friend group in half because Lizzie has maintained that Mark was responsible for her sister’s death years before Shannon transferred to Tommen, and Gerard’s story shakes the foundation of everything she’s believed.
Releasing 10, the latest book in the series, which dropped in May, takes us through Lizzie and Hugh Biggs’ love story and reveals why Gerard’s secret affected Lizzie so badly. She was diagnosed as bipolar as a young child and was also sexually abused by Mark. Lizzie has done a lot of repressing herself, and Gerard’s secret coming out will force her to face some unbearably horrific truths of her own.
Releasing 10 takes readers through Lizzie and Hugh’s childhood and ends just a few months before Shannon transfers to Tommen. Walsh has teased that Lizzie and Hugh will also center the next book, which is tentatively named Claiming 10 (or potentially, Trying 10), but the next book has not officially been announced yet. We have to have faith that another book is coming because Releasing 10 left us with so many more questions than answers. The overlapping timelines of the books have added more context to several past scenes, but have also opened the possibility of new interpretations. To help deal with the anxiety of waiting for an announcement from Walsh and her team, Swooon is recapping the biggest loose ends we need tied up when we’re reunited with the Boys of Tommen again.
1. Will Lizzie and Gerard ever have The Talk?
Lizzie and Gerard have been terse acquaintances at the best of times and full-out enemies at the worst. It was unclear why Lizzie harbored so much contempt for Gerard, especially before the truth about Mark was revealed. Releasing 10 unveiled how much these two have in common, but Lizzie’s disorder and Mark’s brainwashing have made it difficult for her to decipher what actually happened when Lizzie’s sister, Caoimhe, died. It’s so heartbreaking to know that both Lizzie and Gerard suffered for so many years alone, and now fans are eager for them to have an honest conversation so they can start leaning on each other as they begin to heal.
It’s going to be devastating for these two beloved characters to put all of their cards on the table, but prior to Caoimhe’s death, they were best friends. The group can’t really move on until the tension is squashed between Lizzie and Gerard, and the two of them can’t get the closure they need without knowing the full truth about each other. We’re rooting for them to figure it out (and for Mark to be buried under the jail).
2. What exactly did Mark do to Caiomhe?
One of the most harrowing reveals of Releasing 10 is that Mark kept Caiomhe and Lizzie hostage in their house for three weeks before Caiomhe’s body was fished out of the river. Caiomhe caught Mark abusing Gerard and confronted him about it. He followed her home, where she found Lizzie and discovered that Mark had also been abusing her sister. We’re not sure exactly what happens after that, except that Caoimhe writes the letter supporting Gerard’s claims about Mark and gives it to Lizzie to give to Gerard in case she doesn’t make it out of the house alive.
Lizzie is sedated throughout the three weeks that Mark has the two girls stuck in the house, so there’s no clear memory of what happened. Flashes of her memory indicate that Mark killed Caoimhe and then made it look like a suicide, but it’s still a mystery of how he killed her, exactly when he killed her, and what else happened to Lizzie in those three weeks. There are questions to be asked about why the date on Caoimhe’s letter to Gerard is dated three weeks before her death, and those questions will hopefully lead Hugh and the police to the evidence they need to arrest Mark and get justice for everyone he’s abused.
3. Who is the woman in black?
Lizzie has frequent visions throughout Releasing 10 of a woman in black with long claws who is determined to drown Lizzie. Halfway through the book, Hughie also sees the woman in black, which confirms that she’s not entirely in Lizzie’s head. The popular consensus is that the woman following Lizzie and Hughie around Bollylaggin is actually Nell, Lizzie’s “aunt” and potential biological mother. Readers were told at the top of the book that Nell is schizophrenic and broke into the Young house when Lizzie was a child.
BookTokers and internet sleuths have theorized that Nell is actually Lizzie’s biological mom and was caught trying to drown her when she was a baby. The Youngs then took Lizzie in, which explains why Lizzie’s father, Michael, has always been so cold to her. He never really bonded with her as a daughter, and he’s convinced that Lizzie has the same sickness as Nell. Is she now stalking Hughie and Liz so she can keep tabs on her daughter? We know that the woman in black is real, but we need to know exactly who she is and what is it that she wants with Lizzie Young. <
4. Does Hughie find out about Mark abusing Lizzie in Taming 7?
Certain events in Gibsie’s book Taming 7 gained new context when Releasing 10 revealed that Mark also sexually abused Lizzie as a child. Hughie gets “sick” towards the end of Taming 7, and neither Claire nor Gibsie can figure out what’s wrong with him. Fans are wondering if Hughie starts to spiral after he finds out that Lizzie was also abused, and if he does anything to Mark in light of that revelation. We need the next book to give us the weeks after the winter dance from Hughie and Lizzie’s point of view.
5. Do Hughie and Lizzie have an affair?
Hughie and Lizzie have an epic childhood love. That’s said with no condescension whatsoever. Even are preteens, they show more loyalty and grace to each other than in many adult relationships. However, they can’t overcome Lizzie’s transgression in the final act of Releasing 10, or her refusal to own up to what happened. (She thought she was with Hughie, but would she have been as out of it if she hadn’t stopped taking her meds?) Lizzie spends a few months in the hospital to get herself back on track, but by the time she’s released at the end of the book, Hughie has already started dating Katie.
When you reread Keeping 13 and Taming 7 after everything in Releasing 10 , the meaningful looks between Hughie and Liz throughout the series take on an even heftier weight. Fans know through Walsh’s teasing on social media and through her cryptic Spotify playlists that something happened between Lizzie and Hughie during the class trip to Dublin in Binding 13, but what exactly? Did Hughie cheat on Katie when he was so adamant about it being his deal breaker with Liz? We know the feelings between Lizzie and Hughie aren’t gone, but whether they’ve acted on them while Hughie has been with Katie is a big question mark that needs to be resolved.
6. Have Lizzie and Patrick hooked up?
Lizzie is in love with Hughie, but Patrick has carried a torch for Katie since she arrived in the boys’ second year at Tommen. Hughie and Katie only ended up together because Patrick got drunk and kissed Katie’s best friend instead of her on New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, Lizzie and Patrick got closer and closer throughout Keeping 13 and Taming 7, but it is unclear whether they were just mutually sulking in their true loves being together or if they decided to hook up to take the edge off. Readers also know from Walsh’s Spotify profile that Patrick is aware of her bipolar diagnosis, which means that regardless of whether he and Lizzie have gotten physical, he’s made it into the very narrow club of her trusted inner circle.
7. What will Joey’s reaction to Mark’s abuse be?
Joey Lynch has had a soft spot for Lizzie Young ever since she donated a fresh school uniform to Shannon after the only Lynch daughter had hers ruined in a bullying incident. That soft spot turned into life-long loyalty when Lizzie stopped Joey from taking his own life in Redeeming 6 . That tentatively puts him on her side in the civil war between her and Gerard (though we all know there shouldn’t be sides at all, and Joey also loves his Gibsie). They have a protective sibling relationship with each other, and Joey has been known more than once to get violent when it comes to defending his siblings. All hell is going to break loose when he finds out how much Lizzie has suffered. Mark Allen should be deathly afraid of Joey Lynch, especially if Hughie Biggs doesn’t get to him first.
8. Will Lizzie and Hughie be getting two or three books?
Both Shannon and Joey got two books to showcase their respective love stories. Gerard and Claire only have the one, but there’s potential for Walsh to return to their perspectives in a later book. There’s a question mark over whether Hughie and Lizzie will also get two books, or if there’s enough ground to give them three. Releasing 10 covers most of the ’90s and ends in the spring of 2004. The assumption is that the next book will cover summer and fall of 2004 and carry through to the Winter’s Ball of 2006, which is when the entire friend group finds out that Mark assaulted Gerard.
The tension between Gerard and Lizzie, and Lizzie and Hughie, is at an all-time high at the end of Taming 7, which is the farthest in the timeline we’ve ever gotten. It’s possible that a second book is just the events of Taming 7 from Lizzie and Hugh’s perspectives, and then a third book is still needed to give them a proper endgame ending. Maybe that is why Walsh keeps tagging her social media teases with “C10/T10” – we could be getting both Claiming 10 and Trying 10 instead of them being competing titles for the next book.
9. Are Claire and Damien going to be a thing?
Claire and Gerard’s romantic future wasn’t sealed by the end of Taming 7. Gerard obviously has a lot of therapy to go to before he’s ready for a serious relationship, and honestly, Claire needs to grow up a bit before she’s ready to be with someone who has been through that level of trauma. Enter Damien Cleary, No. 23, on the Tommen rugby team. He attempts to block Claire from entering the boys’ locker room in Taming 7, and they share a few other flirty moments, which has fans wondering if they’ll be the next Tommen couple before Claire and Gerard are ready to settle down with each other.
10. Will we get the next book this calendar year?
Chloe Walsh has been pretty prolific in writing the Boys of Tommen series. Fans only had to wait six weeks between Joey’s books, Saving 6 and Redeeming 6. Taming 7 came out in the spring of 2024, and Walsh gave us Releasing 10 just over a year later even as she transitioned to a traditional publishing deal. A “draft” has been delivered to her social media handler, L, which has fans speculating that we could be getting the next book in the series sooner rather than later. A mystery listing for a new Walsh book on Amazon also has the rumor mill going that we could be getting the next installation in fall.
Last we heard from Walsh’s team, things were going to quiet down for a few weeks on her social media accounts after L made a birthday post for Lizzie on Instagram. Is she stepping away from social media to put finishing touches on the next book or just taking a break? Walsh taking care of herself is the first priority, but we can admit that we are chomping at the bit to get back to Tommen and get some closure for Lizzie, Gerard, and the rest of the gang.
There are six books in the Boys of Tommen series. Binding 13, Keeping 13, Saving 6, Redeeming 6, Taming 7, and Releasing 10 are now available wherever you buy books.
