Internationally bestselling author Chloe Walsh recently announced that her hit book series, “Boys of Tommen,” will be adapted into a Prime Video TV series. This should be exciting news considering this is one of my favorite book series, but many fans, myself included, were not happy with this decision. This series has complicated characters and sensitive topics that will be difficult to translate into a TV show.
The first two books in the series, “Binding 13” and “Keeping 13,” follow Tommen College students Johnny Kavanagh and Shannon Lynch. Johnny is a star rugby player, set to play professionally by the summer, who never has time for relationships. Shannon is a quiet girl with a difficult home life who has recently had to switch schools due to bullying. The two have a meet-cute on Shannon’s first day at Tommen College when Johnny accidentally hits her in the head with a Rugby ball. At first glance, this seems like the perfect story to turn into a television series, but many of the main points of this book are extremely dark.
Shannon goes through a lot of very graphic abuse in her home life. Her father struggles with alcoholism and often becomes violent. Meanwhile, she and her older brother, Joey, are left to tend to their three younger siblings. I believe that it is almost impossible for a show to portray Shannon’s abuse in an appropriately in-depth and sensitive way. In many books-to-screen adaptations, the plot is watered down to fit into a certain amount of time and fit a certain audience. This book is not something you can do that with. As a consequence of the plot being watered down, Shannon’s trauma will be reduced to a love story.
Johnny is oftentimes a closed-book with readers only able to see his personality and feelings through his inner monologue. Without this, the audience wouldn’t understand what Johnny has been through and how heavily those things have affected him. There could be a way around this issue by making his character more open in the show, but then we would be losing depth to his character. Any way that Johnny is portrayed will not be accurate to the book.
There are lots of concerns about the casting of this adaptation and whether it will properly portray the characters. The book is set in Cork, Ireland, in 2005. Many fans are concerned that the actors may be too Americanized to play these characters. Another concern is that in high school dramas, the actors are way too old to be playing 17-year-olds, which takes away from the meaning of the story. The thing that makes these books so heartwrenching is that these characters are way too young to deal with these situations. Basically, I don’t want to see Jacob Elordi playing Johnny.
There are so many more characters and plot points that make me hesitant about this series being adapted into a TV show. These are just the main points from the first two books that season one would cover. Some book-to-movie adaptations, such as “Normal People” or “The Hunger Games,” were done beautifully. Unlike those adaptations, I don’t have high hopes that “The Boys of Tommen” will be one of them.