'My Life With the Walter Boys' Is About a Teenage Love Triangle, but What Is It Based On?

It's safe to say that many a teenage girl dreamed of being whisked out of her life and into the arms of multiple teenage boys who would fight for her affections while she learned to ride horses and come of age in a town far from all her worries and cares. No? Just us?

Well, Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez) from My Life With the Walter Boys can relate, because that's exactly what she experienced. Although, it was the tragic loss of her family that forced her sudden exodus to Colorado from New York.

The 15-year-old found herself being raised among 12 rowdy and wild teenage boys and quickly sandwiched into a love triangle with Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry).

With all the complexities and clearly laid plot lines, it begs the question: What is the series based on? Here's a look at the origins of the Netflix series and why the series is so convincing at telling the tale from a 15-year-old's perspective.

We know the trope: One girl steals the hearts of two boys, and they couldn't be more different. Alex, tough and focused on his career, versus Cole, who's a bit of a bad boy. Season 1 concludes with very little satisfaction for fans as a big question looms over Jackie's fate: Who does she end up with?

To look for more answers and understand a bit more about the backstory, we're in luck. Because there is a source material: a Wattpad series of the same name, by Ali Novak, which was later published by Sourcebooks Fire. Wattpad is an online writing site that allows people to create their own original stories or write fanfiction, tag them with relevant tags or trigger warnings, and offer free or paid products for site users.

It's not unheard of for Wattpad, as a digital storytelling platform, to launch series into the public domain, and My Life With the Walter Boys is proof positive that some gems lie among digital stories.

While some details are changed, the series stays pretty close to the source material.

We know that Ali is an adult now, so how did she convincingly write from the point of view of a teenager? Originally, Ali wrote the book when she was just 15, which makes a lot of sense when you consider her insight into Jackie's frame of mind and the way she views the world.

In a post to her blog, Ali once explained, "I wrote the first version of My Life With the Walter Boys when I was 15. That was almost seven years ago, so I don’t remember much of the process. Back then, I was just writing for fun, so I wasn’t worried about creating realistic characters. When I started the process of rewriting the story to be published … let’s just say it was very overwhelming to fix the ramblings of a teenage girl!"

She added, "Cole and Jackie were the hardest characters to write, mainly because in the first version of the story they were so unrealistic. On the other hand, Alex was the easiest character because he is so much like myself" (excerpt via The Cinemaholic).

Knowing that she wrote the series from the perspective of a girl the same age as Jackie helps give it a sense of realism. Luckily, she was able to edit it from the perspective of an adult, so a lot of the perhaps problematic themes have been polished over the years.

Season 2 released on Netflix in August 2025, aiming to answer some questions for fans while creating new ones, but mostly proving that fans are still invested in finding out what ultimately happens between Jackie, Alex, and Cole.