Of course, there are a few differences, as the movie skips over a lot of the book’s plot and exposition. Here are the biggest differences between the Regretting You book and movie. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
1.
The movie is set in a fictional town called Dylan, North Carolina, whereas the book is set in Texas.
2.
In the movie, Morgan tells Jonah she’s pregnant in one of the first scenes, right after she finds out. Meanwhile, the book begins with Morgan finding out she’s pregnant, but she doesn’t tell Jonah until later.
3.
Jenny puts Clara on speaker in front of her mom in the movie, so her mom hears about Miller Adams that way. In the book, Jenny at least goes away to take the call from Clara.
4.
In the book, it’s implied that Jenny was already pregnant with Chris’s baby when she went to sleep with Jonah at his father’s funeral.
5.
In the book, Miller and Clara spend a lot of time working on their film project, but the movie skips over that plotline entirely.
6.
Morgan attacks Chris’s car and kicks the kitchen door in the movie right after she finds out he and Jenny were having an affair.
7.
In the movie, Morgan’s TV is working, but it isn’t in the book, and she spends a lot more time trying to get her TV fixed so she can watch Bravo.
8.
There’s much more of an emphasis on grief and the characters’ inner worlds in the book. Clara worries more about how her dad’s infidelity might affect her relationships.
9.
The movie exchanges Starbucks for a cafe called Refuge.
10.
In the movie, Jonah plays a song that makes Morgan have a flashback of a moment they shared at a swimming pool together.
11.
Morgan seems to like interior design in the movie, and is seen working on sketches multiple times. In the book, Morgan doesn’t really seem to have a passion, though she starts feeling excited about finding one by the end.
13.
Morgan doesn’t seem to forget Clara’s birthday in the movie, but she definitely does in the book.
14.
Clara also goes to the cemetery on her birthday in the movie, which doesn’t happen in the book.
15.
In the book, Miller and Clara spend a lot of their time together working on a film about hating the color orange, which they watch at the end, and he then surprises Clara with a homemade film featuring the first time he saw her and ending with a prom-posal.
16.
Clara gets into college in the movie and gets the lead role in her school play, but neither of these things happen in the book, and there’s more tension between Clara and Morgan about Clara’s acting dreams in the book than in the movie overall.
In general, the characters in the movie seem to go through a lot less emotional strife than the characters in the book. The book does a pretty good job of showing how grief and infidelity strains the relationships between all the characters and puts them all through various crises.
How do you think the film adaptation of Regretting You stacks up against the book? Let us know in the comments!
