Tag: book adaptations

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

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It’s been way too long since I’ve posted about something I’ve read! I don’t have a good excuse really, and there was a good amount of time in February? when I was reading pretty regularly. I think it was around this time that the new season of Outlander was premiering so it was hard for me to keep up with what was going on in the timeline of the show verses what I was reading in the first book. Life just got away from me I guess, but I finally picked it back up and finished!

I’ve been a fan of the Outlander television series for a little while now. Of course this meant that I would have to read the books eventually, but there were always other books that I wanted to get to first. It didn’t help that there are so many Outlander books in the series, and that I knew that they were pretty long.

I finally decided to take them on and I’m so glad that I have, or at least I’m glad that I’ve started.

For those who have watched the show but haven’t read the book, the show did a fantastic job of sticking to it’s source material. From what I can remember the storyline follows what happened in the book almost exactly.

I can’t remember if it left off in the same place or if part of the first book was included in the second season. Part of me feels like it did because there’s just so much that happens I can’t possibly imagine squeezing it all into one season of a series. I might have to go back and re-watch just to check.

This story is so exciting and has so many parts, it’s really hard to even write about the plot and how I felt about all of it. I’m not even going to try.

I will say that I really enjoyed getting to see Claire and Jamie fall in love all over again. They’re just so great together, right? I am curious what the books will be like and if we’ll get to see more of the time when Claire went back to the present. I’m interested in knowing more about what it was like for Frank all the time that Claire was away and I feel like it was just a very short amount of time in the tv series.

I’ve already purchased the second book and I’m hoping to get through this one a little faster. My goal is to read them all by the end of the year, but we shall see.

After We Fell by Anna Todd

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Finished with book three! I can’t believe there’s only one left to the series (not counting the one that’s about Hardin’s life before Tessa). I purposely tried to drag this one out because I really don’t want these books to end.

These books really are like a soap opera, which I guess is why they’re so addictive. There are so many twists and turns, so many secrets, so much betrayal. It’s kind of crazy because I definitely felt like Tessa deserved better when I was reading the first book, but now I’m 100% in support of their relationship because I really don’t believe anyone could love Tessa more than Hardin, even if his love is kind of all consuming.

I’m about to get into spoilers so stop reading if you’re actually going to read these books.

The thing that happened with Steph at the beginning was crazy. I definitely was not expecting that and couldn’t believe that this whole time she had a thing for Hardin and was mad that he was with Tessa. I did question why she didn’t tell Tessa about the bet if she was truly her friend, but I didn’t really think that she would go this far. Anna Todd did set up everything with Dan though, he obviously would try to get revenge. I also owe Zed an apology for thinking he’d actually send texts from Hardin’s phone.

Everything at the end with Vance was pretty shocking too. It kept being hinted at that Vance had loved someone other than his first wife and Kimberly, but I’m not sure I would have guessed that it’d be Trish. Once Hardin caught them together I absolutely knew that this was where it was going. I also couldn’t imagine reading that and then having to wait for another book to be released. I need to keep reading to find out what happens.

I mentioned already that I fully support their relationship now, which is kind of funny because it’s definitely something I didn’t expect. I could understand the attraction to each other, but they seemed so toxic. I’m sure this was done on purpose, but with all the other people in their lives having toxic relationships as well it almost makes theirs not so bad. Yes they fight and Hardin is way too controlling of Tessa, but for the most part they don’t lie to each other and they don’t cheat.

I’m really rooting for them in the next book. I hope their relationship continues to get stronger and that Hardin comes around and finally agrees to marry Tessa. Also hope that they make this book into a movie as well. I need it to be a movie.

I found out that there’s a book series about Landon too. I’m kind of curious how that one is and whether or not it’s worth reading. I wonder if Hardin and Tessa make appearances in those books. I might actually read them if they do.

After We Collided by Anna Todd

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When I read through a book really quickly sometimes it’s hard for me to figure out what exactly I want to say about it. I think it’s safe to say that the After series has me hooked.

At first I was a little put off by the perspective changes, but it was kind of nice to see things from Hardin’s point of view. I always think back to this creative writing class that I had in college where the professor told us that switching the narrator is lazy writing, but I think sometimes it can be done really well and add to the story.

The relationship between Tessa and Hardin in this book was definitely a roller coaster ride. They have so many highs and lows, it’s hard to keep up with. It’s exactly what I was expecting to happen when I finished the first book, and I plan on reading the others, but I really hope it’s not the same thing over and over again. I want to see these characters grow and stop being so toxic to each other.

I kind of wish that Anna Todd would have built more into Zed being a bad guy. I feel like until he took Hardin’s phone to text Tessa I really didn’t believe that Hardin was telling the truth about Zed not having good intentions. I wish there was some foreshadowing to this. Maybe there was and I just missed it?

I really am curious to see what could possibly happen in the next two books. I’ve seen that the fifth book takes place before everything, so that should be interesting to read.

I’m sure I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on the third book.

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

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I’ve been going through this weird sort of dating thing with a guy for the last two years. It really doesn’t make any sense to my family and friends, and I know that it isn’t healthy for me anymore, so I’m working on ending it completely and letting go.

I’ve avoided love stories for this reason, but I actually think reading Dear John may have been what I needed.

John is in the army and has really struggled throughout life. He meets Savannah, they fall in love quickly, but then he has to go away. They write letters, but eventually the distance becomes too much and she ends it. She moves on, gets married, but it’s obvious that they both have a lot of love for each other.

I think reading this book made me really think about how you can have these intense feelings for someone, but that they might not be the right person for you, or that the timing may not be right and it just might not work out for that reason only.

I think it’s important to recognize this and use that as closure so that you can move on. John wanted the best for Savannah and was okay with letting go of his own desires so that she could move on and hopefully be happy. I really like that. I like that they didn’t have their happy ending together, but they both could be happy with how things ended up. It’s more realistic than the fairy tale stories about love.

The Shining by Stephen King

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I have never read anything written by Stephen King before. It’s pretty crazy actually because I’m such a huge fan of horror movies. I’ve always heard that he wasn’t happy with the Stanley Kubrick film, so I was interested in seeing how it was different.

I really, really enjoyed the character development. You could really see that there were hidden issues inside of each of the characters and that the hotel really fed off of their problems. I absolutely loved Wendy and really found myself rooting for her the entire time.

Danny was such an intelligent little boy. I really loved his character as well and the insight into his thoughts while he was trying to understand the adult’s problems and thoughts.

In the movie, I feel like I never really but together that Danny’s “talent” was called shining. I vaguely remember Hallorann calling it the shine, but for some reason that just didn’t stand out to me, which I thought was interesting. I also never really felt like the hotel was after Danny in the movie, it just seemed like Jack was sort of stir crazy and needed a drink.

There were so many things in the movie that weren’t in the book and really surprised me. The creepy twins, the blood gushing from the elevator. I feel like both of these are very iconic and always what people think about when they think of The Shining, so it was interesting that they weren’t even part of the book.

The story was more creepy than scary, just gave me sort of an eerie feeling.

The ending was much better than in the movie, in my opinion. Instead of Jack freezing to death the hotel blew up and burned down completely. It’s more believable, I guess.

I also liked that it showed what happened to Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann at the end. I was glad that they all survived and sort of stayed a part of each other’s lives. I’m kind of interested in reading the sequel, but I don’t know if I’ll do that any time soon.

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

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After reading You, I absolutely had to know where the story would go.

I thought that it would be more about what happened to Joe after he killed Beck, how he was worried about the mug, the therapist, etc. There was a little about that and it was sort of interested, but for the most part it felt like this story wasn’t going anywhere.

After Beck, Joe dated Amy. Again there were obvious red flags with her, but he thought he was in love. She, of course, left him and stole from him. It made him feel like an idiot, so he decided to hunt her down.

I honestly would have preferred that the story just be about getting back at Amy. Instead he meets a woman named Love (completely ridiculous to literally name a character in this story love). I really have no idea why the author felt the need to distract him from everything else going on by having him fall in love with a character literally named Love. Then there’s a whole side story with her brother that I’m not even going to get into. It all just felt like a distraction.

The only purpose of Love is that Joe ends up confessing his crimes to her and she goes and gets the mug from the Salinger house. Honestly, I feel like there had to be a better way to get Joe in there to get that mug. It’s a bit of a stretch honestly.

It’s crazy too that she was just cool with his entire confession, all because she has a crazy brother. It was incredibly dumb and made me hate it honestly.

Eventually Joe runs into Amy, but it’s very anticlimactic. He just sees her and decides not to kill her because he’s in love with Love.

Joe finally gets caught at the end, but it doesn’t really come together well. There were just little things here and there, no real evidence was found against him. The part about Joe and Love having to figure out the answer to the police officer’s question was dumb.

Just overall, I wasn’t very happy with the storyline. It doesn’t feel like it was well thought out and it’s too complicated. There were also way too many celebrity name drops. It was almost like the author thought that the first season would get picked up as a tv show or movie so she wrote the second novel to see how many celebrities she could actually get into it.

I actually would not recommend this to anyone that liked the first book. I’m interested to see how true to the storyline the show will be in it’s second season. I hope they simplify it some.

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro

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So this is actually pretty interesting because I believe Guillermo del Toro released the book after the movie came out. If I’m wrong about this, please let me know.

I was at Books A Million one day and they had a whole table full of books that had been adapted into movies and I saw The Shape of Water there. It wasn’t until later that I actually downloaded it onto my Kindle and realized that it was more of a movie adapted into a book. At first I was a little put off by it, to be honest. I really enjoyed the movie and just felt like maybe del Toro did this to explain things better and to me that meant that he felt he didn’t explain it well enough in the movie.

The beginning of the book was really slow for me and it actually took me a really long time to read it because of this. I just didn’t care about the tracking of the creature in the Amazon or Lainie’s move to Baltimore. The only parts I was interested in reading were from Elisa’s point of view because she was deaf and it was actually interesting to read her thoughts.

It’s actually funny that I had to drag myself through Lainie’s parts at the beginning because she ended up being one of my favorite characters. She didn’t have a large role in the movie from what I remember, so it was nice to get to see her story line evolve in the book.

The second half of the book was much more interesting to read. I usually don’t read science fiction-type stories, but I actually liked the love story between Elisa and the creature and how they went through awful things to end up together. I think that’s relatable enough for a reader, without hoping you’ll one day meet the fish man of your dreams.

Despite some parts being slow, this was incredibly well written from the different points of view. You really get a good sense of each character’s personality and that’s really important to telling a good story.

The fish/creature/man’s point of view was pretty weird though. It definitely added to the story, but it was an odd choice to make when the lack of communication between it and everyone else was such a strong focus. I also find it hard to believe that it’s thoughts would be in English.

Overall really interesting to read and definitely added something to the movie. Would 100% recommend to anyone who loved the film.