Sixteen-year-old Deian wants to be something that doesn’t exist: normal. He wants to ride the school bus without having a panic attack and to have real conversations with real friends, not imagined ones with dead artists.

Anest, 17, has long abandoned her quest for normality. She doesn’t think she deserves to be here on, so doesn’t really care if everyone else thinks she’s obnoxious (well, maybe everyone apart from that girl she can’t stop staring at in group therapy).

The two very different teens meet by chance late one night. They support each other unfailingly, but are unable to turn that same affection towards themselves and continue to grapple with the self-hatred that threatens to drown them.

Can Anest and Deian find a way to free themselves from the weight of normality and - together - realise that an entire sky of possibilities is waiting for them?

Sixteen-year-old Deian wants to be something that doesn’t exist: normal. He wants to ride the school bus without having a panic attack and to have real conversations with real friends, not imagined ones with dead artists.

Anest, 17, has long abandoned her quest for normality. She doesn’t think she deserves to be here on, so doesn’t really care if everyone else thinks she’s obnoxious (well, maybe everyone apart from that girl she can’t stop staring at in group therapy).

The two very different teens meet by chance late one night. They support each other unfailingly, but are unable to turn that same affection towards themselves and continue to grapple with the self-hatred that threatens to drown them.

Can Anest and Deian find a way to free themselves from the weight of normality and - together - realise that an entire sky of possibilities is waiting for them?

Adapted by the author, behind the sky was originally published in Welsh as tu ôl i’r awr, (Y Lolfa, 2020) and won the Welsh language Wales Book of the year Award in 2021.