“A troubled young mother yearns for a shot at redemption,” reads the synopsis of the blockbuster novel “Reminders of Him.”
On March 13, this story of redemption, forgiveness and maternal love will move from the page to the big screen. The film adaptation trades typical Hollywood escapism for the messy reality of grief, an expected theme from the novel’s author, Colleen Hoover.
Directed by Vanessa Caswill, the film follows Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe), who returns to her Wyoming hometown after serving seven years in prison for a tragic mistake. Her goal is simple but seemingly impossible: earn the forgiveness of those she hurt and meet the daughter she has never known. Along the way, she encounters both the resentment and compassion of her community, as well as a newfound love.
Hoover, the author behind bestsellers like “It Ends With Us” and “Verity,” has sold more than 35 million books worldwide. “Reminders of Him” alone has sold 6 million copies in the U.S. and has been translated into 45 languages. For Hoover, this story came from personal experiences as a mother and conversations with her sister about prison reform, according to a statement shared with the Deseret News.
“We talked a lot about what people go through after they get out,” Hoover said. “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.”
A lens on motherhood
To capture that rebuilding, Caswill and a women-led filmmaking team leaned into the female “gaze” to deepen the story’s exploration of motherhood and forgiveness.
“As women, we were all very invested in the material and very passionate about it,” Caswill told the Deseret News. “Stories of mothers was something that everybody really connected with and I certainly did personally. All types of stories need to be told and the gaze at which they’re told in the right hands makes them deeper and more powerful.”
This perspective allowed the filmmakers to explore the reality of a mother trying to rebuild her own life while seeking connection with her daughter.
For Monroe, portraying Kenna required balancing two identities: the carefree girl before the accident and the hardened woman after prison.
“I think it was important to differentiate between the younger version of Kenna pre-trauma versus this older, mature version of her,” Monroe told the Deseret News.
The film doesn’t just focus on Kenna’s motherhood; it also explores the perspective of Grace (Lauren Graham), the mother of the man Kenna hurt. As the grandmother of Kenna’s daughter, Grace shuts Kenna out, not from spite, but from a need to protect her family from more heartbreak.
A lens of forgiveness
Caswill noted that the lack of a traditional villain makes the story feel authentic.
“That’s what I loved about the book, that there’s no villain. That everybody’s flawed, everybody has some fault, different levels of fault, and everybody wants to do their best,” Caswill said. “I loved all the characters and I felt compassion for all of them. I really hoped that if I treated them in that way, then the audience would receive them in that way too.”
Tyriq Withers, a former college football player, found a similar path to his character, Ledger. He told the Deseret News that his own life experiences allowed him to tap into Ledger’s nature and grief.
“I think he’s not only grieving a human being but grieving what he thought his life would be, grieving sports, grieving the past,” Withers said. “It just informed me to be more myself within the character of Ledger.”
There’s something so lovely in the story around being able to see the other person’s perspective in the end. At first it’s impossible and there’s all these reasons to feel divisiveness and separateness and hatred even, and that’s something that exists in our world right now. And if there’s a way to get closer to one another or see the other with more compassion, then I hope that might come too.
Vanessa Caswill
When asked what they hope audiences will take away from the film, Monroe told Deseret News, “I hope that people out there relate to these characters, can see themselves in these characters and the struggles. Life is hard, it’s really hard, and to maintain hope and love I think is key.”
Withers agreed. “Definitely. I’d say just give more hugs. You’d be surprised by how far a hug can go.”
“Consensual hugs,” Monroe added with a laugh.
Behind the scenes
Despite the heavy subject matter, the set in Calgary, Alberta — which Hoover noted shared an “incredible” resemblance to the story’s setting of Laramie, Wyoming — was often lighthearted.
“The movie was very intense, but we had so much fun filming this,” Monroe said. “We had so much fun. There was four-wheelers involved, there was a lot of dancing involved.”
“It’s really a very special experience,” she added.
Hoover remained involved on set, co-writing the screenplay with Lauren Levine and handling rewrites to ensure the film remained a faithful “complement” to the book, a statement sent to the Deseret News noted.
As the film prepares for its debut, Caswill hopes viewers find the same empathy the filmmakers did.
“I really hope that they (audiences) feel a sense of heart opening,” Caswill said.
“There’s something so lovely in the story around being able to see the other person’s perspective in the end. At first it’s impossible and there’s all these reasons to feel divisiveness and separateness and hatred even, and that’s something that exists in our world right now. And if there’s a way to get closer to one another or see the other with more compassion, then I hope that might come too.”
Box-office expectations
“Reminders of Him” will make its debut on the big screen on March 13. Box Office Pro projects an opening weekend between $10 to $15 million in its opening weekend. It follows the release of two previous Hoover novels to be adapted on the big screen.
Most recently, “Regretting You” earned just over $13 million in its domestic debut, earning $90.5 million worldwide in its debut last October, according to Box Office Mojo.
The most successful box-office performance came from “It Ends With Us,” propelled by the star-studded cast of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The film earned over $50 million in its domestic debut in August 2024, according to Box Office Mojo. The film went on to earn $351.4 million worldwide.
