A High Schooler's Wattpad Story Just Became Netflix's Super Hit

Summary

• My Life with the Walter Boys was first published on Wattpad over a decade ago.
• The writer was all but unknown, but her series gained the attention of millions online.
• The series was so successful that a second season was confirmed astonishingly quickly.

My Life with the Walter Boys was quietly released on Netflix in December 2023, and immediately captivated audiences. The series took second place on Netflix’s Global Top 10 in its first week, and then amassed an astounding 20 million views over the next two weeks, sending the show to Number 1 during that time.

Fans, swooning over the rural coming-of-age drama and teen romance, have many questions. Who will Jackie choose? When is season 2? And most importantly; who is behind Netflix’s hottest new release?

My Life with the Walter Boys was not another product from a revered author, or a hot-shot producer, but rather, an amateur writer’s Wattpad story that’s more than a decade old.

The unknown writer behind the series that stole our hearts

When Alex Kalnins published My Life with the Walter Boys to Wattpad back in 2010, she never expected the romantic drama she had started in highschool to amass an astonishing 80 million views. Nor could she have expected her book to be picked up by Sourcefire books in 2014, and finally, for it to be turned into a Netflix smash-hit, but that’s exactly what happened.

Kalnins, who began her first draft of My Life with the Walter boys when she was just 15, is now 32 years old, and when she published her story on Wattpad under the name Ali Novak, she could never have dreamed that it would be picked up by Netflix all this time later.

"When I found out, it was the best I felt in a long time. It was the high in a year of lows."

What is it about?

The concept of moving from city life to country life is nothing new, nor is the plotline of losing everyone you love in a freak accident. This being said, My Life with the Walter Boys meshes the two, together with a whole lot of boys, drama and chaos.

The series follows fifteen-year-old Jackie, whose upmarket and comfortable lifestyle in New York is turned upside down after her parents and sister are killed in a tragic accident, and she is moved to a farmhouse in rural Colorado to live with her mother’s best friend, now her legal guardian, and her 9 boys.

In between settling in, and holding on to her Princeton dream, Jackie finds herself unexpectedly torn between two of the Walter boys, and desperately trying to understand her feelings. There’s highschool drama, heartbreak, and self-discovery, and we can expect to see more of that, with a second season being confirmed less than two weeks after the release of the first.

This isn’t the only big series from an amateur writer

My Life with the Walter Boys is not alone as an unexpected hit. Netflix’s Kissing Booth trilogy starring Joey King and Jacob Elordi was once a manuscript published to Wattpad by a then 15-year-old Beth Reekles in Wales, England. Hulu ’s Light as a Feather horror series was first published on Wattpad in 2013, as was the series Cupid’s Match, and the increasingly addictive After film series.

Wattpad calls itself the world’s largest storytelling community, with a monthly user base that surpasses the 100 million mark. As of July 2023, Wattpad recorded its users having 26 billion minutes a month reading original stories on the platform.

What comes next?

The series skyrocketed to popularity, and a renewal, with a season 2 that promises the same chaotic cast, and of course, the love triangle that has seen fans torn between Team Alex and Team Cole. We don’t know when we’ll get it, but we know it will be good.