I went into Reminders of Him really wanting to like it. I’ve read more than one Colleen Hoover book, and I typically like her books. I actually liked Reminders of Him when I read it too. There was just one major problem.

I freaking hated Kenna.

It wasn’t because of the accident. Accidents happen, even horrible ones. It was what Kenna did afterward that I could never get past. She believed Scotty was dead and left him there. Instead of making getting emergency help for him the priority anyway, she spiraled into wanting to die herself.

Except Scotty wasn’t dead. He was still alive for hours.

I know Kenna was injured. I know she had been drinking. I know she was traumatized and obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I understand all of that. But I don’t care what Colleen Hoover tried to throw at me afterward to make me find redemption in Kenna. That was the wall I couldn’t get over. She left Scotty there without making sure help was coming, and I was done with her.

So when the movie got to that night, I was waiting for it. And then something happened that completely changed how I felt about Kenna.

She tried to stop and get help.

Okay. Now I understand her.

That change might not seem huge, but for me it was. This was a Kenna I could actually have some sympathy for, and Maika Monroe made that even easier. She was easily the best part of this movie. I believed her sadness. I believed her guilt. I believed how badly she wanted to see Diem. Nothing felt like Monroe was trying to show me Kenna was hurting. I just believed she was.

Which made what was happening on the other side of the love story even more noticeable.

Tyriq Withers looks like Ledger. He sounds like Ledger. If you handed me the book and then showed me a picture of him, I’d probably say, “Yep. That could be Ledger.”

But I wasn’t feeling Ledger.

That was the problem.

Ledger has so much going on inside of him in this story. Scotty was his best friend. He loves Grace and Patrick. He absolutely adores Diem. Then Kenna comes back, and suddenly everything he thought he knew about her starts getting messy. He begins helping her while keeping it from the people he loves, and eventually he starts falling for her.

I could hear all of that in what Ledger was saying. I just wasn’t seeing enough of it in Withers.

The biggest thing for me was Diem. This man loves that little girl, so when he talked about her, I wanted to see it. Give me that little smile you can’t control. Let his face change. Let his eyes light up. Something.

It finally happened when he was talking about the house he was building and how he didn’t want to live too far away from her.

There you are!

That was the first time I really felt what Ledger felt for Diem, and I immediately noticed it. I just needed more of that throughout the movie.

I think that missing emotion hurt the romance too. Kenna and Ledger already have a relationship that’s going to be a hard sell. This is Scotty’s girlfriend and the mother of his child falling for Scotty’s best friend. Ledger even knew Scotty was planning to propose to her. That’s some serious baggage to work through.

Then we have Ledger pissed at Kenna over the cross, and suddenly they’re kissing.

WTF?

I knew where the relationship was going because I’d already read the book, but knowing two characters are eventually supposed to fall for each other isn’t the same as actually feeling them fall for each other.

Thankfully, there were other people keeping me watching. Zoe Kosovic was wonderful as Diem, and I loved Monika Myers as Lady Diana. Lady Diana brought some much-needed life into the movie every time she showed up, and Myers was just incredibly easy to like.

Between Myers, Kosovic and Monroe, I had enough to keep going.

Because good Lord, I was bored.

That’s really the simplest way I can explain my biggest problem with this movie. I kept waiting for it to grab me, and it just didn’t. I recognized scenes from the book. I remembered conversations. Things were happening. Yet somehow I was still sitting there thinking, can we please get this moving?

And the crazy thing is that the movie fixed the exact thing I thought I needed it to fix.

Colleen Hoover helped write the screenplay, so of course I started wondering about that change to the accident. Did she know some readers had the same problem with Kenna that I did? Did she look back at that part of the book and decide Kenna needed to at least try to get help in this version?

I don’t know. That is completely my theory. Colleen Hoover has certainly not called me up to explain her screenplay decisions.

But I noticed it because that one change did what the entire book couldn’t do for me.

It made me forgive Kenna.

And yet, somehow, I liked the book more.

I know a lot of people really enjoyed Reminders of Him. I wanted to be one of them. I expected to cry. I expected it to hit harder once I actually watched Kenna’s story happening in front of me.

Instead, the credits rolled and all I really had was:

Well… okay then.

Sometimes a movie just doesn’t hit.

This one didn’t.