Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers talk Reminders of Him book-to-film changes: "You can’t get every detail from the book"

As with all literary adaptations, some deviation from the source material is practically inevitable – for better or for worse. Only last month, the response to Emerald Fennell's take on Wuthering Heights proved how quickly straying from the source can provoke some serious discourse among fans of the original text.

Reminders of Him, the new romantic drama set for release this week, has been adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by wildly popular author Colleen Hoover. The book is one of Hoover's most beloved, having sold over 6 million copies in the US alone. The film marks the third adaptation of her literary canon, with a fourth, Verity, set to debut in October later this year.

The story follows Kenna (played by Longlegs's Maika Monroe), who has just been released from prison following a traumatic incident. Upon her return, Kenna sets out on a path towards forgiveness, while also trying to reconnect with her daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic), who she has never met, and navigating a budding relationship with Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a local bar owner with ties of his own to Kenna's past.

While Reminders of Him is certainly a faithful adaptation of the source material – as Monroe previously told Radio Times when the film's trailer was released, "My gut is that the fans will be happy" – the very nature of adapting a film from a book meant that some things had to be tweaked, specifically in the way the relationship between Kenna and Ledger initially unfolds.

When speaking exclusively to Radio Times, leads Monroe and Withers discussed adapting the book from its source, and the tweaks that had to be made.

"I think that the superpower of book-to-screen adaptations is not really holding on tight to everything," said Withers, "And knowing that the best parts did make the screen. And when you're making a different form of media, you can't get every detail from the book."

"But yeah, I think the best parts did make the film," he added.

Monroe has long been vocal about being a fan of the source material. Speaking of how she navigated the changes between Kenna's book-self and screen-self, she said: "I mean, I loved the book, and I feel like all the moments that were so important came over into the script.

"It was all there, this beautiful arc of these two people falling in love. I don't want to say it was easy, but it was there, you know. It wasn't hard to find."

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And it seems all tweaks were given the sign-off from Hoover herself, who was on set throughout filming and also served as an executive producer on the project.

She described her on-set experience as a "good time," adding: "If [the cast] did find something in the script that was like 'Oh, I don't know if I would have said it that way', we would just do a switch up real fast.

"And so it did really, I think, make it easier, instead of having to go through all these channels, just [for] everybody to be there and [change] it in the moment."

Reminders of Him will be released in cinemas on Friday 13 March 2026.

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