Reminders of Him is a literary phenomenon from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover, becoming a transformative feature film about motherhood, forgiveness and the power of love to overcome even the worst mistake.

The novel grew out of conversations Hoover was having with her younger sister, who was completing graduate work focused on prison reform. “We talked a lot about what people go through after they get out,” Hoover says. “She was so passionate about it that it stayed with me. After one of those conversations, I felt compelled to write about a woman whose life is shaped by a tragedy that sends her to prison, and what it means to try to rebuild her life after she is released.”

That woman is Kenna Rowan. After serving seven years in prison for an accident that took the life of her partner, Scotty, Kenna returns to the small town of Laramie, Wyoming. While incarcerated, she gave birth to a daughter she has never been allowed to raise. She comes home with no legal standing, few resources and little goodwill from the community she left behind. Her daughter has been raised by Scotty’s parents, Grace and Patrick, and Kenna’s return reopens a grief that has never fully settled. As she tries to rebuild her life, Kenna learns that remorse does not guarantee forgiveness, and her growing connection with local bar owner Ledger pulls her closer to the family that is still defined by loss, anger and unresolved pain.

Motherhood shapes the story at every level, informed in part by Hoover’s own experience as the mother of three sons. “My experiences as a mom influenced this story a lot,” Hoover says. “I was immediately drawn to Kenna and her longing to be part of her daughter’s life. I cannot imagine having a child and not being able to be in their life. At the same time, I also feel deeply connected to Grace, who has lost her son. It is easy to understand her anger and her inability to forgive Kenna, because Kenna is the reason for that loss. I like writing from multiple sides of a moral question, and with motherhood, that felt especially important.”

After a perfect outing with her boyfriend, Kenna (Maika Monroe) makes an unbearable mistake that sends her to prison. Seven years later, Kenna returns to her hometown in Wyoming, hoping to rebuild her life and earn the chance to reunite with her young daughter, Diem, whom she has never known. When Diem’s custodial grandparents adamantly refuse Kenna’s attempts to see her daughter, Kenna discovers unexpected compassion, and then something truer and deeper, with former NFL player and local bar owner Ledger (Tyriq Withers). As their secret romance develops, so do the dangers for both of them, leading Kenna toward heartbreak and, ultimately, the hope for a second chance.

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From Page to Screen

Screenplay co-writer and producer Lauren Levine recognized the story’s cinematic potential early on. Her background in literary adaptation shaped her first collaboration with Hoover on the Confess series, which later led them to co-found Heartbones Entertainment in 2023. “When we worked on Confess, Colleen came to set and immediately stood out for how instinctively she understands film and television,” Levine says. “Every question I asked was met with an answer that pushed the material further. Over time, we developed a great creative shorthand. When I read Reminders of Him, I ended up in a puddle of tears, which does not happen often to me. I called Colleen right away and said, ‘I think this is a movie.”

The adaptation marks a turning point in Hoover’s relationship to her work. Reminders of Him is the first screenplay she has co-written and the first film she has produced under the Heartbones banner. Working closely with Levine, Hoover helped shape the script and determine which elements of the novel were essential to preserve. “I wanted to make sure the parts of the book that meant the most to me made it into the script,” Hoover says. “But adapting a book also means learning to let go. Writing a script is such a different process than writing a novel. All of those internal thoughts on the page have to be expressed in new ways. I think of the movie as a complement to the book. It does not need to replicate it. What matters is that audiences feel the same emotions they felt when they read it.”

One of the film’s tools for preserving Kenna’s interior life is her letters to Scotty, which serve as an emotional throughline rather than as a conventional narrative device. “The letters were essential to understanding her inner world,” Levine says. “When you adapt a first-person story, you lose that direct access to a character’s thoughts. The letters gave us a way to bring that interiority back without it feeling heavy-handed. We used them selectively, mainly when she is processing what happened the night of the accident or reflecting on her feelings for Ledger. We also explored her notebooks as a way to show her guilt and her attempt to move forward.”

With the script in place, the focus shifted to finding a director who could protect the story’s intimacy while shaping a film with visual scope.

Vanessa Caswill, whose work adapting character-driven material reflects a precise attention to performance, mood and visual detail, quickly emerged as a natural fit. “Colleen and Lauren shared the outline of the story with me before I read the book,” Caswill says. “They were very keen that I read the script first and see if I felt connected to it. I was immediately drawn to the themes, the emotional restraint, the moral uncertainty. After several conversations, it was clear we were aligned in how we envisioned the film.”

Caswill was particularly drawn to the story’s understanding that emotional relief is often fleeting. “What stayed with me was how clearly the story understands that happiness and beauty arrive in brief, unexpected moments,” Caswill says. “Often through small acts of kindness or connection. None of these characters know what the right thing to do is. They want to do good, but they are moving through grief, anger, guilt and love all at once. The story does not offer easy solutions. It is about people trying to act with integrity when the path forward is unclear and learning to live with that uncertainty.”

Having directed several literary adaptations, Caswill approached the project with a defined methodology for translating page-to-screen. “I treat the book as the Bible while making an adaptation,” Caswill says. “I am always trying to understand what the author is expressing beneath the plot. I work in layers, tracking themes, physicality and breath. I pay close attention to how characters hold tension in their bodies, how they move through a space and how a moment feels internally. Those things cannot always be written into a script, but they matter enormously for performance. I also mark anything visual. Colors, textures, atmosphere. Anything the author communicates through observation rather than dialogue. By the time we are filming, the book becomes a map of emotional, physical and visual cues.”

Tone was equally central to Caswill’s approach. “One of the things I find most special about Colleen’s writing is that, even when she is dealing with very painful material, there is always a dry wit running through it,” Caswill says. “With a story this emotional, that balance matters. It cannot become relentlessly heavy, but it also cannot soften the weight of what these characters are going through. We were always aiming for that space in between. My instinct was to stay faithful to the book and trust that the visual language would come naturally from the material. If I could capture the heart of the story honestly, I was confident the film would find its own voice.”

For Hoover, Caswill’s leadership was defined by her conviction. “Vanessa had such a clear vision from the start,” Hoover says. “She understood the exact tone and feel I was hoping the film would have. She approached the film as an artist fully immersed in every detail. Watching her shape the story with that level of intention was incredible.”

Levine saw that vision carried consistently through the production. “Vanessa brings both poetry and precision to her work,” Levine says. “Her use of color and light, and the way she collaborates with actors, gives every frame a sense of intimacy. She is European, telling a deeply American story, and that perspective adds dimension without creating distance. The material demands restraint, and Vanessa approached it with such honesty that the film never loses its balance.”

Caswill worked closely with Emmy-nominated cinematographer Tim Ives to establish a visual approach grounded in landscape and proximity. The film pairs expansive compositions with intimate framing, using the surrounding environment to place the characters within a vast physical world while keeping the camera grounded in their lived experience. “I wanted the look of the film to feel deeply rooted in the landscape,” Caswill says. “That scale creates isolation, but it also feels benevolent. From the first shot over the mountains, the landscape reflects what the characters must cross to reach each other.”

After the project found its home at Universal, producer Gina Matthews joined the team, bringing decades of experience in character-driven storytelling.

“I had a great meeting with Vanessa, Colleen and Lauren, and everything aligned very quickly,” Matthews says. “What stood out was the cohesion of the group. It was a female-led team at every level, working from a shared understanding of the material.”  

Hoover remained on set throughout production, which allowed the script to evolve alongside the performances. “I did not anticipate rewriting as much as I did,” Hoover says. “But being there every day meant I could see immediately when something was not working, or when Vanessa or the actors had questions. We could talk through it and adjust in the moment. That responsiveness became one of the most rewarding parts of the process for me.”

Her involvement extended across departments. “No one knows these characters and this story better than Colleen,” Matthews says. “She has an incredible ability to step back and observe her own work. When others were focused on logistics, she would step in with ideas that only she could bring. Her instincts around casting, locations, wardrobe and props were always spot on. She had a hand in every department in a way that felt thoughtful and authentic, and you can feel that presence in the finished film.”

Throughout Reminders of Him, love appears in many forms.

There is love between friends, love between parents and children, and love that arrives under circumstances that make it fragile and contested from the start. Each relationship carries the weight of responsibility and the long work of living with what cannot be undone. “I have always been drawn to stories that tell the truth and still leave room for tenderness,” Hoover says. “Stories that make you feel everything all at once. This one lives in the messiness of love and the aftermath of tragedy, but it also believes in connection. It believes that even when nothing comes easily, people can still find their way back to themselves, and to each other.”

Colleen Hoover occupies a rare position in contemporary publishing. Her readership is vast, yet her work remains resolutely intimate. Since the start of her career, more than 35 million of her books have been sold worldwide, but scale has never redirected her focus. Her stories consistently return to women navigating grief, responsibility and the permanence of irreversible decisions. Rather than offering tidy resolutions, her stories often allow emotional truths to take precedence over comfort. That sensibility anchors Reminders of Him, published in 2022 and embraced by millions of readers around the world.

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