Regretting You – Colleen Hoover

I thought the book itself was pretty good. I’m not the biggest Colleen Hoover fan, but Regretting You was cute. Colleen Hoover books all have the same idea but with different characters. She has also been controversial in the past so I try not to call myself a fan of her. I did wish there was more plot between the family and the drama of the (spoiler!!) affair, but it mainly focused on the romance part of it, and the familial relationships were just a subplot. The story was pretty basic, but I think that’s typical in Colleen Hoover’s books. The plot was predictable but its not expected that one of her books would be the best book every written. 

Director Josh Boone and screenwriter Susan McMartin did a decent job at staying pretty true to the book. They did remove a big part of the ending that made the declaration of love a lot more meaningful in the book than in the movie. It just fell flat without the cute ending. The pacing did feel a bit off, and the story felt rushed. But that was expected because you can’t always fit everything from the book into the movie.  There was nothing special about the cinematography, but it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t shocking how good it was. Especially with a movie about an aspiring film student, I think they could’ve had some more interesting filming strategies. 

The actors did a good job. The story isn’t very deep, so there weren’t many interesting choices the actors could make, but they did a good job with the script they were given. I think Mckenna Grace and Mason Thames were very good picks to play Clara and Miller. Overall, the story itself was a 3.5/5 stars, and the adaptation was a 3.75/5 stars. I wouldn’t watch/read it again, but I thought it was a well-adapted movie, except for changing the ending. 

Buy Regretting You by Colleen Hoover here and watch it on Paramount +.

People We Meet On Vacation – Emily Henry

While People We Meet on Vacation wasn’t bad, I think she has better books. Emily Henry is a very good writer and has a good contemporary style. If you need a cute, easy book to get you out of a reading slump, then this is a good book for you. It isn’t dense or boring. But it’s not going to change any lives. 

The movie adaptation, however, was lacking in many ways. All the plot points were there; there wasn’t anything major missing.  But the pacing was SO off. I understand that to keep it true to the book, it would be a 5-hour movie, but director Brett Haley could’ve done it a lot better than he did. 

The book was able to spread the plot out and make the drama and the “will they wont they?” more intense, but the flashbacks to past summers in the movie weren’t done justice at all. Every flashback was a short clip, and half the time the scenes picked from the book that didn’t move the story along at all. They were just little funny moments you could laugh at and then move on. 

The love confession didn’t feel as dramatic because you weren’t put through the amount of stress of wondering whether they would get together or not, as you did in the book. Then, four minutes later, they are broken up again. I couldn’t even enjoy being happy about their reunion because it was just ruined a few minutes later. 

Emily Bader and Tom Blythe did very well at becoming their characters, and they were definitely who I envisioned them as. Overall, I liked the movie; it was enjoyable, but it didn’t give me the same satisfaction that reading the book gave me. I didn’t feel as happy for the characters because I wasn’t as invested in their story, as it was too rushed to feel any emotions towards the characters. 

People We Meet On Vacation also won the survey both times. I asked students and staff a few questions. One was out of all four which was your favorite? The other was if you had to live in any of these world which one would you live in? People We Meet On Vacation won both.

Buy People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry here and watch it on Netflix.

Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell’s writing in Hamnet is extraordinary. The way she takes one moment in history and makes it into such an interesting story, and something you’ve never read before. While it’s a book of fiction, I feel like I’m learning so much when I read her stories. 

Hamnet was one of the best movie adaptations I’ve ever seen. The writers included so many parts of the book, even parts that they didn’t necessarily need to include. The actors did a phenomenal job. Especially Jessie Buckley. She took that role and ran with it. The amount of emotion that she brought to the screen was incredible. She definitely deserved Best Actress at the 2026 Actor Awards. 

Obviously, they couldn’t include everything from the book, but they still did a great job. The only part I wished they added was some context between Agnes and her stepmother’s relationship, because in the book it’s very clear that she’s mistreated, but in the movie it’s hard to understand why their relationship was so strained. Also, you don’t get to see the extent of the abuse that Shakespeare is put through by his father. 

I talked to Ms. Maureen Vint in the library about her thoughts on the movie because she loved Hamnet so much. She said that without reading the book, she “would’ve been lost in certain places” and losing some important character relationships “made the movie a little confusing” to those who didn’t read the book. She said that she “loved the differences” between the book and the movie because of how well they changed parts, and it didn’t feel like it made the movie worse. 

Buy Hamnet here and watch it on Amazon Prime.

“Wuthering Heights” – Emily Brontë

There are almost no words for how good Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is.  The drama, the obsession, the relationships, the love triangles (sometimes squares? pentagons?), and the writing of this book were phenomenal. This was the first classic book I read for fun and not for school, and it exceeded all my expectations. The writing was hard to understand at some parts and I may not have understood all the nuances that were there, but thats understandable if you’ve never read a book like that.

Please note, after watching the trailer, I was very skeptical about how good this movie was going to be. “Wuthering Heights” was everything that was expected from the trailer. First of all, if you haven’t read the book, you might think it was a good movie. It’s almost like Emerald Fennell read the back of the book and then based the movie on that. But she didn’t do it well. 

This wasn’t a good adaptation because it wasn’t an adaptation. They only used the characters from the book. If they called it something different the “Wuthering Heights” then you wouldn’t expect it to be similar to the book and it could’ve been considered a good movie. I get that adding the quotation marks made it seem like they changed it enough that the plot could be changed but it didn’t do what they thought it was going to do.  

Nothing about the movie was historically accurate to the book or the time period. While the outfits and house were beautiful, it didn’t make any sense because it’s nothing like that in the book or back then. 

Also, the casting was completely off. Heathcliff is not a white character. It’s essential to the plot of the book that Heathcliff is a black/gypsy character, and he is treated differently than everyone else because of that. Jacob Elordi taking this role was completely wrong. he shouldn’t have accepted the role if he was a good actor who wanted to make a good movie that’s true to the book. He has said multiple times that he is a big reader who reads a lot of important novels. If he was such a book snob I can’t understand why he would take on this project. 

Margot Robbie is also way too old to play Catherine. She is a 35-year-old woman, and she looks 35. Catherine is supposed to be 15 when Heathcliff leaves and 19 when he comes back. a 35 year old shouldn’t play a 15-year-old. Cathrine was also never that annoying and full of herself. The writers changed so much, especially about the characters’ personalities. 

This movie was never a love story. It was about obsession and abuse and heartbreak and unrequited love. The movie made it into a steamy romance to go see with your boyfriend or girlfriend. The book was never like that. 

Overall, this was a horrible adaptation and not a much better movie. They should’ve made this a different movie altogether, instead of trying to trick everyone into thinking it was an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s amazing Wuthering Heights. 

Buy Wuthering Heights here and watch it in theatres.

I also added a fun little survey to see if people read the book first or watch the movie.

Most people said they read the book first but more people then I thought said no or maybe. I guess some people aren’t as much of a book lover as I am.