What inspired The Beach Party 

What inspired The Beach Party 

Have you ever done something really terrible and got away with it? Something that, years later, still fills you with utter dread in case someone finds out about it?

This was the thought that first sparked my idea for The Beach Party. Most people have something hidden in their past that they would rather other people didn’t know about – but not usually something so terrible as the characters in this book.

I wrote a lot of this book during Covid, and like many people, I was desperate to get away from the same four walls I seemed to be staring at, day after day. I’d been fortunate enough to go on holiday to Deià, in Mallorca, just before the start of the pandemic with some girlfriends that I’ve known since my early twenties and who I’d partied with in the sweltering nightclubs of Amnesia and Pacha in Ibiza back in the day.

Our early twenties may be some way behind us now (sadly!), but the memories of those holidays when we were younger flickered through my head as I kept returning to look at these photos during lockdown. Deià was such a beautiful place, I decided it would make the ideal location to set this story – a small town with stunning villas set on clifftops overlooking the bluest of water and isolated beach coves. A place where the islanders celebrate the Correfoc – a festival of fire for one night of the year during which legend has it that you can dance with the devil.

I’ve always been fascinated by the darker side of friendship and the dynamics within a group, perhaps inspired by reading Lord of The Flies many years ago, and I wanted to explore what could happen to a group of friends in the aftermath of a terrible accident on a post-graduation holiday, and what lengths they would go to in order to try and cover up what they’ve done. I thought it would be fascinating to go back and revisit them thirty years later, when the secrets they buried on that holiday resurface and come back to haunt them.

I was a teenager in the late 1980’s and remember it as an iconic era; Madonna, Duran Duran, the rise of MTV and acid house raves. It’s the fashion and music I remember most – listening to mix tapes recorded off the radio and played back through orange foam headphones on my Sony Walkman. I wanted to try and capture something of the atmosphere of that period in this book, as well as the sense that it was a time when it felt as if we had much more freedom – no mobile phones, no apps to track where we were.

But I also realise we have a tendency to look back on the past with rose-tinted spectacles, and it was only when I went back and researched in more detail that I became fully aware of issues such as the introduction of Section 28, the fact that the age of consent for gay relationships was still 21 and same sex civil partnerships weren’t possible – these things were just as much a part of that decade too, and I wanted to try and reflect the impact they had in this story.

My eldest daughter will (depending on A-level results!) be heading off to university herself this year and perhaps that’s another reason for why I chose a split timeline for this book. When your children start to leave home, I think it is inevitable to look back and reflect on the past, and I realised that time has the ability to pass simultaneously both very slowly and also very quickly, depending on your perspective.

I look back on the time I spent at Birmingham university (which is the university my characters have just graduated from in The Beach Party) with great fondness. Despite the fact it was over twenty-five years ago, I can still remember the library, the lecture theatres, many of the staff and fellow students as clearly as if I’d only left a month or so ago. We have a tendency when we are young to consider ourselves invincible, and when we leave home for the first time, away from parental influences and familiar routines we have the opportunity to test boundaries and take risks without thinking too hard about the consequences. I wanted my characters to experience this kind of hedonism and explore what happens when they make a mistake and something goes tragically wrong. How does that shape their future life? What price do you pay for past mistakes?

These are just a few of my thoughts on what inspired the book – if you pick up a copy over the summer I hope you enjoy it!

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Nikki Smith studied English Literature at Birmingham University, before pursuing a career in finance where she worked for various companies including BDO and Morgan Stanley.

Following a ‘now or never’ moment, she applied for a Curtis Brown Creative course on which she started writing her debut novel All In Her Head which was pre-empted by Orion in a two-book deal. It went on to be an Amazon bestseller, was nominated for the Guardian ‘Not The Booker Prize’ and has been optioned for TV. Her second novel, Look What You Made Me Do was published on 1 April 2021. She then followed her editor and moved to Viking who will publish her third novel, The Beach Party in July 2023, with The Guests to follow in 2024. She is a co-host of the podcast and vodcast In Suspense alongside Lesley Kara and Lauren North and is represented by Sophie Lambert at the C&W agency. She lives near Guildford with her husband, two teenage daughters and a cat who thinks she’s a dog.

Website: https://nikkismithauthor.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mrssmithmunday

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In Suspense: https://linktr.ee/insuspense

THE BEACH PARTY

Six friends.
The holiday of their dreams.
One night that changed it all . . .

1989: The tunes are loud and the clothes are louder when a group of friends arrives in Mallorca for a post-graduation holiday of decadence and debauchery at a luxury villa.

A beach party marks the pinnacle of their fun, until it isn’t fun any longer. Because amidst the wild partying – sand flying from dancing feet and revellers leaping from yachts – an accident happens. Suddenly, the night of a lifetime becomes a living nightmare.

Now: The truth about that summer has been collectively buried. But someone knows what happened that night.

And they want the friends to pay for what they did.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing