The Boy Next Door by Jenny Ireland (author)

Now she wasn’t Molly Cassidy, St Anne’s pain-in-the-hole princess. She was nine-year-old Molly who was my best friend in the whole world. Nobody had put her in the recovery position. All these people and they’d just left her like that . . . I held her hand until the ambulance came. Finbar and Molly live next door to each other. When they were children, they spent hours and hours together. They were best friends. Until they weren’t.

Now 18, Fin and Molly move in very different circles. Molly is popular, pretty, dating the most handsome boy in the whole school. Fin has one friend and he’s pretty sure he hates his dad and his little sister.

At a party one night, though, they’re pulled together in a way neither of them expects and then follows a year that will see them experiencing life-changing challenges, friendships, love and everything in between. Praise for Jenny Ireland: ‘Everything a YA contemporary novel should be: full of warmth, growth, and romance . . . beautifully relatable and a powerful reminder of the importance of empathy’ – Paper Lanterns ‘Romance with substance’ – Irish Times

Jenny Ireland, nominated for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing 2024