Thousands of writers dream of hitting the big time with
their first novel. And that’s exactly what Beth Reekles has done. The
surprise is that Beth is a 17-year-old schoolgirl studying for her A levels
and hoping to read physics at university.
She began writing at the age of 15, sitting upstairs in her
bedroom at the family home in Newport, Wales and uploading a chapter of her
work at a time. She quickly got the thumbs-up from her readers. Her very first
chapter received a million hits and pretty soon she was being deluged with
emails urging her to upload the next instalments faster.
Beth then began writing on Wattpad, the free online
novel-sharing platform for amateur writers, and the compliments flooded in. Her
first novel, The Kissing Booth,
rapidly became the most-viewed, most-commented-on teen fiction title on
Wattpad, with 19 million reads and 40,000 comments to date. It won the Wattpad
Award for Teen Fiction and last October was snapped up by Random House.
Beth has now signed a three-book deal with Random House and the publisher has
already released The Kissing Booth as
an ebook (it will be published in book form this summer). The ebook reveals
that Beth, whose real name is Reeks, is “an undeniable bookworm and an avid
drinker of tea,” while her acknowledgements include “a big thank you” to her
GCSE English teacher, Mr Maugham.
So after all that, what is the book actually like? Well, it’s
aimed at the YA market, so I’m clearly not the target reader. But the answer is
that it’s sweet, romantic and well-written. Not only that, it will appeal to
older readers too.
Set in America, it’s the story of Rochelle (also known as
Elle or Shelly), a pretty 16-year-old who’s never had a boy friend and has never
been kissed. She and her male best friend Lee hit on the idea of organising a
kissing booth at their school’s spring carnival, where she ends up kissing Lee’s
bad boy older brother Noah, tries to keep her feelings for Noah secret from Lee and
finds her whole world turned upside down.
Not surprisingly, Beth’s teenage characters sound real and
authentic. They talk like teenagers and act like teenagers – which is more than
you can say about some of the teen novels written by older novelists. The book’s gone down
a storm with readers in America and the Far East, as well as the UK, and there’s
no doubt about it, Beth Reekles is an author to watch.
The Kissing Booth by
Beth Reekles (RHCP Digital, £2.84)
