They Had It Coming – Nikki Smith

Published By: Penguin
Pages: 368
Released On: 22/05/2025

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer . . .

Nate and Layla, Jude and Sophie. They’ve been a four for as long as they can remember: fancy dinners, dancing ’til dawn . . . Even living and working together.

So when Nate and Layla suddenly quit their lives and move to Bali, with its white sands and exotic beach clubs, Jude and Sophie are their first visitors. Anything to escape their life in London.

But as the two couples reunite, cracks begin to show.

Which is hardly surprising; they’ve been lying to each other for years.

And now, it’s time for revenge.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

Amazingly, this is my first Nikki Smith book, but I’ve heard such rave reviews for it, and her.

I am not a hot holiday kind of person. I’m more of a wrap up in several layers whilst exploring Lapland in the snow (that would be my dream) kind of holiday. And yet if you take away all the thriller elements, Nikki has made the idea of living, or at least holidaying, in Bali sound really lovely.

I like the four main characters – Layla and Nate, and Sophie and Jude; there are some similarities, as there often is in friendship groups, but they’re clearly their own people and their own couples, and they work well individually and as a whole. None of them are 100% good and none are 100% bad. They are flawed and just very real.

I love this dysfunctional element she’s created. Friendships at any age and of any length are never straightforward. Everyone has arguments and disagreements and secrets. But the love binds them together. And I think Nikki has captured that. There are clearly issues within the couples and between the couples, which shows they are not perfect. It’s in this glamorous location, and it could have been quite an unbelievable glamorous story, but she’s added all the darker elements that reality brings.

Nikki has cleverly weaved the storylines together, dropping clues and hints throughout, whetting the appetite of the reader. There’s so many layers, from stuff happening now, in the recent past, and further past. It’s all mixed together and never feels like too much. You think you’ve figured something out and then something else happens and it completely throws everything up in the air.

I read it in less than a day, it was so addictive. This may have been my first Nikki Smith book but it definitely won’t be the last.