Creators: Laura Dave (Novel) & Josh Singer

CAST
Jennifer Garner
Angourie Rice
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Aisha Tyler
Geoff Stults
John Harlan Kim
Augusto Aguilera

Review

The end starts at the beginning and the beginning starts at the end. If you’ve read the book this will make sense in conjunction with the first minutes of the two-episode premiere. The show has a sleek look that gives makes it a little more sophicated than it is but after being told that it’s soap-opera like in most aspects I can’t unsee that. The dialogues mostly and even the acting has a soap feel to them. It’s funny because for now the two episodes follow the book beat for beat, to the point that I suspect that what annoyed me about the book will annoy me here. Hannah’s relationship with her Step-daughter is what I liked the least in the book and given how well this show is cast I think I’ll have to suffer through it.

As much as I’ve enjoyed reading the story, I’m still looking for the upgrades in the screen version, and so far there are none. I assumed that for a visual medium they’d make more significant changes to elevate this story but it doesn’t look like it. Not all books can or should be adapted as they are.

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Book review | Get it