Hello! I’m Nikki Allen.

I’m an author, speaker, trainer and BACP-registered therapist; my debut novel The Hideaway is published by Pan Macmillan in July 2025. A thriller set in a luxury Costa Rican resort, it follows five strangers stranded in the rainforest after a luxury wellness retreat with a famous influencer goes murderously wrong…

The Hideaway has been selected as Apple Books’ Thriller of the Month for August, is a Prima summer book pick, and one of CultureFly’s Best Books of the Summer. It’s also been endorsed by authors including Peter James, Amanda Reynolds and Kate Riordan, and is the September pick for Tea Leaves and Reads book club.

Alongside my writing, I’ve trained 20,000+ people in writing, confident communication, boundary setting and workplace wellbeing for clients including the UN and the government. My essay for The Guardian, on boundaries and the phrase that helped her stop people-pleasing, became the site’s most-read article that day.

I wrote my first book aged five - sadly, The Adventures of Silly Susie Sausage was never published - and have been writing ever since. I was born in Holland, grew up the only Jewish kid in a tiny Worcestershire village, and now live in North London with my family, and a rather overweight cat named Tiny.