THE OLD KISS PRINCIPLE
Young U.K. author scores a hit teen rom-com by keeping her storyline simple
When Beth Reekles embarked upon a graduate trainee scheme at an IT company in Swindon last September, her new colleagues had no idea she was the author of three published novels. Nor did they know that the 23-year-old had sold the film rights to her first book, a high school romance called The Kissing Booth, to the streaming giant Netflix. And neither Reekles herself nor her colleagues could have guessed that, come summer 2018, that film would be one of the most surprising hits of the year.
“I don’t tend to bring it up,” Reekles says matter-of-factly.
Among a certain demographic, Reekles, from Newport, South Wales, is not only well known, she is verging on J.K. Rowling-levels of celebrity. The Kissing Booth has been read more than 19 million times on Wattpad, a storysharing app beloved by teenagers and twentysomethings.
Instagram and Tumblr are awash with memes, quotes and stills from the film and book, generated and disseminated by her fan club, the Kissquad. And Noah Flynn, the unfeasibly good-looking bad boy at the heart of the novel, has become the YouTube generation’s Mr. Darcy.
Netflix doesn’t release streaming figures, but Ted Sarandos, its chief content officer, has called it “one of the most-watched movies in the world” and the company has revealed that, of those who have watched The Kissing Booth, a third have seen it more than once — a rate 30 per cent higher than normal.
In the days after its release in May, it was the fourth most popular film in the world, according to votes registered on the website IMDb. And its stars, Joey King and Jacob Elordi, leaped from adolescent nobodies to the sixth most popular actress and No. 1 actor in the world — again, as voted by IMDb users. To the delight of their fans, the pair are dating offscreen, too.
If you’ve not heard of it, it’s probably because you’re over 20. Even Ian Bricke, Netflix’s director of independent film, has admitted they “weren’t aggressively marketing the film.” Instead, they relied on the recommendations of teenage social media users, who can be very persuasive indeed.
The Kissing Booth story is simple: Elle (King) and Lee (Joel Courtney) are best friends who were born on the same day, in the same hospital in Los Angeles. Their firm friendship survives the death of Elle’s mother from cancer and is based on a strict set of rules, such as “Never share our secrets with anyone else” and “Always be happy for your bestie’s successes.”
But trouble arises when Elle kisses Lee’s motorcycle-riding brother Noah (Elordi) at a school fundraiser (in the titular kissing booth) and she starts to contemplate breaking rule No. 9: “Relatives of your best friend are totally off-limits.”
If it sounds rather clichéd, it might be because that was exactly what the then-15-year-old Reekles was aiming for when she wrote it. Surrounded by a deluge of Twilight-inspired fictional werewolves and vampires, Reekles fashioned her own high school romance and set it in California — where she is still yet to go.
The reason for the U.S. setting, Reekles says, was simply that she figured most young readers, wherever they lived in the world, would be familiar with the U.S. school system “because of movies like Mean Girls and shows like Gossip Girl.”
Reekles, the daughter of a former HR manager and IT professional, has been writing stories since she was six, but indulged in the pursuit more seriously when her parents gave her an old laptop at the start of secondary school.
A friend recommended her to Wattpad. The platform, founded in 2006, contains millions of stories by aspiring writers that can be read for free. Reekles used it to self-publish The Kissing Booth — uploading the story in serial form. The first chapter quickly clocked up 50,000 “reads” and 18 months later, Reekles was approached by a children’s imprint of Penguin Random House with a three-book publishing deal. The Kissing Booth emerged as a paperback in 2013 and, later that year, Reekles went to university to study physics.
While her classmates were still working out which clubs and societies to join, Reekles was having her book turned into a movie.
The finished product harks back to teen movie classics of the 1980s and ’90s. Director Vince Marcello even cast Molly Ringwald (famous for the 1985 film The Breakfast Club) as Noah and Lee’s mother, and featured The Breakfast Club anthem Don’t You (Forget About Me) in a prom scene. Reekles says the film is “cheesy and amazing.”
The critics are rather less convinced. The Kissing Booth has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 13 per cent (the audience score is 68 per cent). Its naysayers say the film’s plot is outdated, sexist and problematic — mostly because of the violent and controlling nature of “misunderstood” heartthrob Noah, although the frequency with which Elle is caught in her underwear doesn’t help.
“I ignore it, mostly,” Reekles says of the backlash. “I’m not going to feed the troll. I think people are always going to find fault with it.” Plus, she says, The Kissing Booth does have “a really healthy attitude toward sex. Elle and Noah’s relationship is very consensual and positive.”
Reekles is bombarded daily on social media by requests for a sequel (The Kissing Booth finishes on a tantalizing cliffhanger). “There are so many people clamouring for it that I’m not going to make empty promises,” she says firmly.
The physics graduate is still doing her day job in IT. “I really like my job,” she says. “I have no plans to leave it. I want to do both (IT and writing ).” IT’s loss could soon be teen fiction’s gain.