The Kissing Booth

Overview

Beth Reekles’s The Kissing Booth is a young adult contemporary romance with the bright, comic framework of a school story. Reekles first posted it online in 2010, when she was fifteen; Random House later published it in book form in 2012. The novel’s route from online serialization to commercial publication is part of its identity: readers encountered the story on a sharing platform before it became a widely recognized book and, later, the basis for a screen adaptation.

The story centers on Rochelle “Elle” Evans and her lifelong best friend, Lee Flynn. The two are exceptionally close and have built their friendship around a set of rules. At their school’s Spring Carnival, they decide to run a kissing booth. When a participant backs out, Elle is waiting on the stool when she realizes that the next person in front of her is not the person she expected, but Lee’s older brother, Noah Flynn. Noah is known at school as a formidable, popular bad boy, and Elle has had feelings for him before. The unexpected kiss brings those feelings back and sets off a romance that complicates her closest friendship.

Elle and Noah begin to see one another, but Elle worries about what their relationship will mean to Lee. She tries to keep it secret rather than risk hurting her friend, while also having to reckon with Noah’s volatile and possessive behavior. The resulting tension is not simply a matter of whether the couple will get together: Elle has to weigh excitement against trust, secrecy against honesty, and attraction against the question of how she wants to be treated. The book follows her through the misunderstandings and conflicts that arise as she tries to protect her friendship without denying her own feelings.

Themes and writing background

The novel explores first love, loyalty, growing up, self-discovery, and the boundaries that matter in both friendship and romance. Lee and Elle’s bond is not a secondary detail; it is the emotional foundation of the story and the reason the romance becomes difficult. Elle’s feelings for Noah make her reconsider an old crush and the assumptions she has made about love. The book’s comic setting and fast-moving romantic complications keep the tone accessible, while its conflicts invite readers to consider the consequences of secrecy and the difference between romantic appeal and respectful behavior.

Reekles began writing and sharing the story as a teenager. In an interview, she described herself as a “pantser,” someone who writes without relying on a fully plotted plan, and encouraged aspiring writers to write the kind of book they would like to read and to share their work online. That advice reflects the novel’s own early history: an online audience helped bring attention to a story written by a young author, and its popularity preceded traditional publication.

Reception and legacy

The Kissing Booth became Reekles’s best-known work and grew into a series. Its 2018 film adaptation introduced the story to a much larger international audience through Netflix and made the school carnival’s kissing booth its signature image. The film rearranges or changes aspects of the book’s events, so the two versions are related but not identical. The novel’s continuing recognition rests both on familiar, enduring subjects—friendship and first love—and on an unusually visible publishing journey from a teenage writer’s online posts to print and screen. It is an important example of how digital reading communities can help a young adult story find a broad readership.