REVIEW: ‘Reminders of Him’ Is A Moving Colleen Hoover Adaptation

Maika Monroe fans, tell me if you’ve heard this one before: if I had a nickel for every 2026 film that begins with Maika Monroe leaving prison…

The earlier film, In Cold Light, was a gritty thriller with a slick sense of style, though its pacing was uneven. The second, Reminders of Him (2026), is a cohesive romantic melodrama with a firm grip on its pacing and tone, but no remarkable visual style.

But films based on Colleen Hoover’s novels, like Regretting You (and its uncanny valley de-aging) and the infamous It Ends with Us, are known for stylistic hallmarks of their own. Namely, unusual character names, weepy confessions of love, complicated romances, questionable ethics…and pretty good casting.

Reminders of Him checks the standard boxes for romance melodrama. 

Maika Monroe stars as Kenna, who’s fresh off jail time for causing the accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow). Their daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic), born during Kenna’s time in prison, has been raised by Scotty’s parents (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford), and Kenna’s legal rights to Diem have been terminated. When Kenna comes back to town in hopes of meeting the daughter she’s never even held, she has a chance run-in with Scotty’s best friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers).

They’d never met before – when Scotty died, Ledger, like Withers’ character in Him, was a professional football player and was never around. (Does this imply a Him cinematic universe? Does this mean we’re about to get Julia Fox in the next Colleen Hoover movie?) Ledger has been a father figure for Diem, having moved back home to help take care of her, and he is not thrilled about Kenna’s return.

It’s not hard to see where Hoover’s screenplay, cowritten with Lauren Levine, is headed – Kenna and Ledger have genuine chemistry, with a meet-cute before they know one another’s identities and a fair bit of tension after they’re properly introduced. The tropes of romantic melodramas require such characters to fall in love and keep it a secret.

Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers share genuine chemistry. 

The thing keeping them apart is truly believable and even moving: Kenna’s determination to meet her daughter is as earnest and heartfelt as Scotty’s parents’ desire to raise Diem in a stable environment. The stakes are credible without being corny, the sincerity is real without being sappy.

Monroe and Withers are a well-suited pair, but Pankow is given less room to build chemistry with Monroe in flashbacks. Graham and Whitford are always welcome presences on screens big and small (although this writer’s brain did wander, imagining a world in which Lorelai Gilmore and Josh Lyman might have met and married).

Jennifer Robertson of Schitt’s Creek and country star Lainey Wilson are given smaller roles with little to do besides fill out the world of the story. Perhaps the most striking supporting character is Monika Myers as Kenna’s quippy young neighbor, who introduces herself as “Lady Diana.”

A Colleen Hoover adaptation finally delivers some charm. 

Vanessa Caswill, no stranger to book adaptations (her work includes PBS’s underseen Little Women, aka the Maya Hawke version, and Netflix’s Love at First Sight), directs capably. The needle-drops veer Reminders of Him back into the saccharine territory it tries to avoid.

An early flashback to Kenna and Scotty’s love story begins with the opening notes of Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met,” and this writer’s nearly full screening erupted into groans. The use of Coldplay’s “Yellow,” more effectively utilized in Crazy Rich Asians, has a significance here that isn’t drawn out enough, and subsequent covers of the song feel like an aggressive metaphor for the evolution of Kenna’s love moving from Scotty to Ledger.

For all its tropes and uninspired music choices, Reminders of Him has a genuine charm neither of Hoover’s previous adaptations achieved. (Just wait until Verity, based on a wildly different type of Hoover novel, releases this fall.) In less capable hands, it might veer into cringey territory. But when Monroe speaks, you lean in to listen, and when she cries, it feels real. She is an actor who has wielded horror, thrillers, and historical fantasy with equal gravity. If you see Reminders of Him, it succeeds because of her.

Reminders of Him (2026) is out now in theaters.