My Weekend

 Nothing awakens my inner "teen girl" faster than a Colleen Hoover movie.

On Saturday, I went (alone) to "Reminders of Him," a heartstopper. Maika Monroe is driving her car--and she has just "bedded" her fiance in a little secluded lake. Her postcoital recklessness means that she does not swerve for a pothole, and so her car is sent flying off the edge of a cliff. She thinks that she has inadvertently killed her fiance--she stumbles away from the car and drinks herself into a blackout state. But--all along--her fiance has been struggling, slowly dying. Maika is charged with vehicular manslaughter; tearfully, she pleads guilty. But she doesn't know that she is pregnant! For seven years, she can't see her child. She can't even have one postpartum day with the kid--the kid goes immediately to the NICU.

But--after seven years--Maika gets out of jail and falls for her new employer. It's just an unfortunate twist that her new employer is also the surrogate unofficial father of her daughter--whom she is legally barred from contacting! Maika did not know this man in her former life because he was off fighting for his professional future in the NFL--and the NFL dates happened to match up exactly with the dates when Maika was courting the man who would become her fiance. So, even though the NFL guy was close with the fiance guy, the NFL commitments meant that an NFL guy/Maika meeting could never occur.

As I wept, I texted my niece (who also sees these movies). "It's a tearjerker." My niece--however--won't buy a ticket until she has read the novel. I respect that.

Our family favorite was (formerly) "It Ends With Us"--but I think that Maika Monroe can "sell" this Hoover material more effectively than Blake Lively.

I'm eager for the upcoming film version of "Verity."