The Kissing Booth: How a Newport teen author inspired Netflix

Growing up in south Wales, schoolgirl Beth Reekles always regarded her passion for writing as a "weird hobby".

So much so, the 15-year-old kept it a secret as she wrote in her bedroom of the family home in Rogerstone, Newport.

Nine books later, her work has been translated into several languages and she was once hailed by Time Magazine as the world's 14th most influential teen - one place behind Justin Bieber.

Now 25, the movie sequel to her first hit, The Kissing Booth, is on Netflix.

"It was a very normal life in Newport, though I always felt a bit of an outsider," said the former Bassaleg Comprehensive pupil.

"I was a little introverted, shy, bookish and loved writing - but I didn't know anyone else who did and it felt like a really weird hobby to have, so I didn't my friends or my family.

"They just thought I was on Facebook or doing homework when I was on my computer but I was actually posting chapters online.

"Twighlight was huge at the time (2011) but I had grown tired of vampires and werewolves and just wanted a high school-teen book but couldn't find one. So I thought I'd write one myself."

Beth had discovered an online story sharing app, Wattpad, and began posting chapters of The Kissing Booth.

At first she was thought it was "cool" to receive a handful of comments and so ploughed on, adding more words until she had gathered 19 million 'reads'. This was all before she had even sat her GCSEs.

The Kissing Booth won a fans award for Best Teen-Fiction of 2011 and a year later, publishers Penguin Random House came knocking with an offer - a week after she had posted her university applications.

"I freaked out when I got the message and ran to see my parents," she recalled.

"I was only 17 and didn't have an agent so my father came with me to read over the contract."

Her parents encouraged her to continue with her studies, "in case this was all five-minutes of fame", but it was to prove far bigger than that.

More books were published and in 2018, the film version of The Kissing Booth was released on Netflix.

"I spoke with the producer and the scriptwriter about their vision for the characters but I didn't know anything about making films and I was finishing my degree at the time," she said.

"But when I went to South Africa to watch the filming, it was an incredible moment to see my characters come to life before my eyes.

"My dad just looked around at all the crew and actors and said, 'Look at all these people employed because of something you created.' It was surreal.

"They said I didn't need to stay while they recorded the same 30-second scene 20 or 30 times but I said, 'Are you joking?! I want to watch every second of this'. It was brilliant."

While the critics gave decidedly mixed reviews, The Kissing Booth was the most re-watched film of the year it was released, according to Netflix who swiftly commissioned a second - which Beth had already started writing years earlier while at university in Exeter.

"I didn't intended to write a sequel but I found it really hard to let go of the characters," she said.

"But I don't think anyone, especially me, expected it to get the response it had, not so much from the critics but certainly the fans."

Despite just publishing her ninth book, writing remains a rather fruitful sideline for the physics graduate who works full-time in IT for an energy company in Solihull, Birmingham.

"I'm actually doing the job I always wanted to do and writing was only ever a hobby - it just happens to be quite a successful one," she said.

"I'm lucky that I don't have to choose between one or the other so I can do both. But I guess it proves that anything is possible and my writing seems to have inspired other young writers."