He’s achieved instant stardom thanks to his breakout debut novel,The Beginning of Everything(Hudson Yards, $27.99), and his whirlwind engagement to Analise Renda, lead singer of the Grammy-award-winning band Untethered.
But what if “having the life” meant inadvertently taking down a lesser-known author’s career?
Followers of Goodreads and the ultra-popular Bookstagram and BookTok know that the plagiarism scandal of author Melody Adams’sHoliday Islanddid little to help her street cred as an author. Quite the contrary: the controversy surrounding Adams’s illicit versions of Nash’s love scenes left a bad taste in the mouths of readers everywhere and drew her a bit closer to becoming a household name—but for all the wrong reasons.
Nash sat down withPeople’s own Alana Morgan to set the record straight.
People We Meet on Vacation
“I met Melody Adams on an airplane,” Nash explained. “She was flying to Aruba the day after Christmas with her mother, who was sick. Her mom needed a window seat, so I offered to switch seats with her. That left me sitting next to Melody for the flight.” The pair became chatty, discovering over the course of their conversation that Nash was an aspiring novelist and that they were staying at the same hotel. Nash took to the woman and her mother immediately. “Mel’s mom was just incredible,” he stated. “She could light up a room with her infectious smile. It was only because of her magnetism that I was as bold as I was to spend time with her daughter that week.”
Adams’s mother, Birdie Paulson, was a singer-songwriter whose mid-90s country hit “Love Is a Melody” received theCMA Award for Song of the Year when it was remade by Luke Combs in 2017. “Her music matched her personality,” said Maggie Friel, Capitol Records Nashville producer. “She was all passion and fire; everybody loved Birdie.”
“I’d never met someone with such a vibrant nature,” Nash continued. “I didn’t have to know her very long or very well to recognize that she loved fiercely.”
Paulson and Adams were visiting the island for the week between Christmas and New Year’s in an attempt to have a mother-daughter bonding experience. Paulson, who was sixty-four at the time, suffered from congestive heart failure, which caused shortness of breath, fatigue, and coughing fits. “I don’t think either of them knew just how sick she was,” Nash clarified.
Nash, meanwhile, was visiting the island for his own personal writing retreat. “I was running from my demons,” he revealed. “My dad left the day after Christmas several years ago, and I was writing a story that had some heavy father-son themes. I just wanted to be as far away from New York as possible. I never dreamed I would meet someone like Melody while I was away,” he added.
A Walk to Remember
“We got to the hotel and later that day, we met down on the beach and went for a walk,” Nash toldPeople. “I ended up kissing Melody in the water. We had an immediate connection. We were both writers; we had a super compatible vibe. It was instant chemistry. And I could tell what kind of personshe was just by the way she and her mother interacted with one another.”
The trio began dining together in the evenings. They caused a scene in the Renaissance Marketplace square when Paulson decided to take to the microphone and sing a parody of “Despacito” in an attempt to get rid of leftovers during a meal where Nash overordered an inordinate amount of food. “It worked too,” he asserted. “I’ll never forget that moment—giving away food to strangers. Only in Aruba.”
Nash and Adams grew closer by the day. “I definitely wanted to ask her to be my girlfriend,” Nash explained. “I just didn’t want to freak her out. Everything was moving pretty quickly.” When asked if he felt it was love at first sight, Nash reported, “It was even better than that. Deeper than love. I knew I’d found my forever-person. I just was young and kind of stupid, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to handle it.”
He made a reservation that included an overnight stay at an exclusive restaurant offering private dining. “By the time we got there, we had already become pretty serious,” Nash stated. “That was the last night of our trip together. And, let’s just say, Melody explained the mechanics of what we had already done in her book. I tried to be a little more buttoned-up about it. But the scenes are the same because we both lived them. They happened in our real lives. Any differences were artistic choices.”
That is to say, Nash believes there was no evidence of plagiarism. “The only thing Melody Adams stole was my heart,” he specified.
Love and Other Words
Nash confirmed the pair did spend their last night in Aruba together. “It was the most amazing night of my life,” he professed. “Start to finish. I guess the only thing I would change was the ending.”
Which is where the story gets interesting. According to Nash, the pair overslept the next morning. Adams returned to the Marriott hotel, where they’d both been staying previously, and Nash went straight to the airport. At the airport, he had a chance encounter with his father—a man whom he’d been estranged from for years—and inadvertently fell, hit his head, and passed out. He fractured his skull and ended up in the hospital, missing the flight back to New York.
Unbeknownst to Nash, Adams also had a life-altering shock that morning. She returned to her hotel room to find that Paulson had passed away. Evan Dresner, Adams’s literary agent, confirmed this information. “Melody was heartbroken. She felt responsible, since she hadn’t been there that night,” Dresner toldPeople. “She fell into a deep depression following that event. In addition to losing her mom, whom she loved dearly, she also lost Beckett, and it was very difficult for her to process those feelings.”
Adams and Nash lost track of each other then, because Adams was unreachable by phone or text. “She deleted all of her social media accounts as soon as she got back from the trip,” Dresner added. “I was really upset about that. It takes a long time to curate a brand online, but Melody didn’t want to talk to anyone after her mother passed away.” Nash explained further, “It wasn’t for lack of trying. I had no ideawhat she’d gone through. I googled her, tried to reach her via her website. I even called her agent,” he noted. “It felt kind of like Cinderella with the glass slipper.”
“Beckett tried to get in touch,” Dresner confirmed. “At the time, I didn’t know that he was the guy she’d been with, or else I would have shared that information with Melody. But I was under strict orders to take her off the grid. She wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with people at that time.”
The star-crossed love appeared to be doomed.
As a last-ditch effort to find Adams, Nash wrote a book about the ordeal. “The Beginning of Everythingwas my love letter to her. But it was also my explanation. I was desperate to find her. I didn’t want her thinking I just never showed up to the airport,” he reported.
Adams’s bookHoliday Islandtook a very different approach. “Melody was trying to meet her contractual obligations to her publisher,” Dresner explained. “She’s a professional, and she was on a deadline for her manuscript. She used what she could from the trip and spun it into a happily-ever-after. It’s no surprise there was overlap [with Nash’s book].”
Love, Theoretically
Still, neither Adams nor Nash was aware they’d written such similar books. That changed about eighteen months later. “I signed on to be represented by Shelby Finn of First Draft [Literary Agency] not long after querying my manuscript,” Nash toldPeople. “She was sure she could sell it; she felt like it was unique, I guess. Everything that happened after thatwas a blur.”
The “blur” Nash referred to was his deal with Hudson Yards, which included a six-figure advance. “They wined me and dined me, like all of a sudden I was the next big thing. I didn’t really understand it. I mean, all I did was write my truth and change the names,” Nash expounded.
“The courtship of a publisher can be multilayered,” stated George Fine, Executive Editor of Hudson Yards. “We took Beckett around, sure. Brought him to a few events, meet-and-greets, that sort of thing.”
The Hollywood royalty treatment extended to a VIP suite at an Untethered concert, where Nash was introduced to Analise Renda. “She spilled a drink on him after the show,” according to Renda’s bandmate, guitarist Jojo Howell. “They had a vibe right away, for sure.” (Renda could not be reached for comment.)
