Reminders of Him is one of Colleen Hoover’s most talked-about books, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a story about a mother who made one terrible mistake, paid for it with years of her life, and then had to fight — quietly, patiently, and painfully — to become part of her daughter’s world again. It’s a story about grief that doesn’t fade on schedule, forgiveness that doesn’t come easily, and love that shows up in the most unexpected place.

Below, you’ll find a spoiler-free summary for readers who haven’t finished the book yet, followed by a full summary with spoilers, a detailed ending explained section, a breakdown of every major character, the book’s key themes, and answers to the most common questions people search for about this story including how the movie compares to the novel.

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Whether you’re here to decide if the book is worth reading, refresh your memory before the movie, or settle a debate with a friend about how it all ends, this guide covers it.

Quick Answer

Reminders of Him follows Kenna Rowan, a young woman released from prison after serving time for the car accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty Landry. Kenna returns to her hometown hoping to reconnect with the daughter she’s never really known, Diem, who is being raised by Scotty’s parents, Grace and Patrick Landry.

The Landrys want nothing to do with Kenna — except for Ledger Ward, Scotty’s best friend, who slowly becomes Kenna’s biggest ally, and eventually, much more. By the end, Kenna earns back a relationship with Diem, wins over the Landrys, and builds a new life and family with Ledger.

Book Overview & Background

Reminders of Him is a contemporary romance and family drama novel written by Colleen Hoover, first published in 2022. It sits in that specific emotional lane Hoover has become famous for: a love story that’s tangled up with grief, guilt, and the slow, unglamorous work of healing.

The book is set in a small town, which matters more than it might seem at first. In a small community, everyone knows everyone’s business which means Kenna can’t just quietly start over. Every person she meets already has an opinion about her before she says a word.

A few things are worth knowing before you read (or rewatch) the story:

• The book alternates between Kenna’s present-day chapters and entries from a notebook she keeps, addressed to Scotty — sometimes called her “Dear Scotty” letters by readers. These letters are where a lot of the emotional backstory and hidden truth about the accident comes out.
• The story deals directly with themes of addiction, grief, incarceration, and custody, so it’s an emotionally heavy read even though it’s shelved as romance.
• Reminders of Him became one of Hoover’s most beloved titles among her fanbase, contributing to the author’s broader wave of commercial success that also produced hits like It Ends With Us and Verity.
• It’s part of a growing wave of Colleen Hoover adaptations moving from page to screen, following the box-office success of It Ends With Us.

Genre-wise, expect contemporary romance blended with heavy family drama — this isn’t a light, breezy love story. It’s closer to an emotional slow burn where the romance develops underneath a much bigger story about motherhood, redemption, and second chances.

Reminders of Him Movie Adaptation (2026)

If you searched for “Reminders of Him ending” because of the film rather than the book, here’s what you need to know.

Universal Pictures adapted Reminders of Him into a feature film, with Colleen Hoover herself co-writing the screenplay alongside Lauren Levine. The film follows Kenna Rowan and Ledger Ward, bringing this story of second chances and love to the big screen for the Colleen Hoover fan community.

Key details about the movie adaptation:

• Director: Vanessa Caswill
• Kenna Rowan: played by Maika Monroe
• Ledger Ward: played by Tyriq Withers
• Scotty Landry: played by Rudy Pankow
• The film was produced by Colleen Hoover alongside director Vanessa Caswill, telling an unexpected love story rooted in passion, heartbreak, and hope.
• It carries a PG-13 rating for sexual content, strong language, drug content, some violent content, and brief partial nudity.
• The film had its wide theatrical release on March 13, 2026 in the United States.
• It later arrived on digital platforms on April 14, 2026, followed by Blu-ray and DVD on May 19, 2026.

The movie’s ending follows the same emotional beats as the book’s ending — Kenna’s reunion with Diem, her relationship with Ledger, and her path toward being accepted by the Landrys — though, as with most book-to-movie adaptations, some scenes are trimmed or condensed for runtime. The core emotional resolution, however, stays faithful to Hoover’s original novel.

Main Characters

Character: Kenna Rowan

Role & Arc: Kenna is the protagonist and narrator of the story. She’s a young woman who spent years in prison after the accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty. When the book opens, she’s just been released and is trying to reconnect with her daughter, Diem, who barely knows her. Kenna’s arc is one of the clearest redemption arcs in the book. She starts out ashamed, guarded, and convinced she doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and slowly grows into someone who fights for her place in Diem’s life while also allowing herself to be loved again. Her journal entries, often called her letters to Scotty, show readers a side of her grief and guilt that she doesn’t share with anyone else.

Character: Ledger Ward

Role & Arc: Ledger is Scotty’s former best friend and the owner of a local bar. He’s also, unofficially, one of the biggest presences in Diem’s life, having stepped in as a father figure after Scotty’s death. Ledger starts the book deeply loyal to the Landry family and suspicious of Kenna. As he gets to know her, his loyalty is tested. He becomes the bridge between Kenna and Diem, and later between Kenna and the Landrys, all while wrestling with his own feelings for Kenna and his fear of betraying Scotty’s memory.

Character: Diem Landry

Role & Arc: Diem is Kenna and Scotty’s daughter. She’s a young child being raised by her grandparents, Grace and Patrick, and doesn’t fully understand who Kenna is when the story begins. Diem’s arc is less about internal change and more about what she represents: the reason Kenna keeps trying, no matter how many doors get closed in her face. Small, ordinary moments with Diem, like her turtle or her T-ball games, become some of the most emotional beats in the book.

Character: Scotty Landry

Role & Arc: Scotty is Kenna’s boyfriend and Diem’s father. He’s deceased before the story begins, but his presence is everywhere: in Kenna’s letters, in Ledger’s guilt, in the Landrys’ grief, and in the mystery surrounding exactly what happened the night of the accident. Scotty functions almost as a character in his own right through memory and flashback, and the full truth about his death is one of the book’s most important emotional turning points.

Character: Grace and Patrick Landry

Role & Arc: Scotty’s parents and Diem’s legal guardians. Grace and Patrick are grieving the loss of their son and are, understandably, protective of their granddaughter. For most of the book, they see Kenna as the person responsible for taking Scotty away from them, which makes them resistant to letting her back into Diem’s life. Their arc is a forgiveness arc: from anger and blame toward a more complicated, empathetic understanding of what actually happened.

Reminders of Him Plot Summary

Spoiler-Free Summary

Reminders of Him opens with Kenna Rowan returning to her old hometown after being released from prison. She served time in connection with the death of her boyfriend, Scotty, the father of her young daughter, Diem. Diem is being raised by Scotty’s parents, Grace and Patrick, who want as little to do with Kenna as possible.

Kenna’s only real connection back into that world is Ledger Ward, Scotty’s best friend, who runs a local bar and has become an important figure in Diem’s life. As Kenna tries to slowly rebuild trust with the Landrys and earn time with her daughter, she and Ledger grow closer, even as both of them know how complicated and painful that closeness could become for everyone involved.

Throughout the book, chapters from Kenna’s present are woven together with entries from a personal notebook, where she processes her grief and her memories of Scotty. The full picture of what happened the night of the accident, and why Kenna was the one who ended up in prison, doesn’t come together until later in the story, and it reshapes how both the characters and the reader understand everything that came before.

Full Summary (With Spoilers)

Kenna Rowan is released from prison after serving time connected to a car accident that killed Scotty Landry, her boyfriend and the father of her daughter, Diem. She returns to her small hometown with almost nothing, determined to become part of Diem’s life again, even though Diem is being raised by Scotty’s parents and barely knows who Kenna is.

Grace and Patrick Landry, still grieving their son, treat Kenna with open hostility. They’ve built a life around Diem that doesn’t include her mother, and they see no reason that should change. The one person who doesn’t immediately shut Kenna out is Ledger Ward. As Scotty’s closest friend and a near father figure to Diem, Ledger has every reason to be loyal to the Landrys, but he agrees to help Kenna get supervised time with her daughter, mostly out of a sense of fairness.

As Kenna spends more time around Ledger and, in small doses, around Diem, her relationship with Ledger deepens into something neither of them planned. This creates real tension, since Ledger is essentially caught between the Landrys’ grief and his growing feelings for the woman they blame for their son’s death.

Throughout the book, Kenna’s personal notebook entries, written as letters addressed to Scotty, reveal more of her side of the story: her relationship with Scotty before the accident, her own struggles, and her guilt over the night everything changed. These letters eventually become important evidence, in an emotional rather than legal sense, of what Kenna’s life and mindset were actually like, correcting assumptions the Landrys and others had made about her.

The turning point in the story comes when the full truth about the night of the accident is finally laid out. Kenna had believed, for years, that Scotty died instantly in the crash. The devastating revelation is that he actually survived for a period of time after the accident before he died, a detail that changes how several characters, including Kenna herself, process what happened and who is really responsible for what went wrong that night.

This revelation, combined with Ledger’s efforts to help Grace and Patrick see Kenna’s letters and understand her perspective, becomes the catalyst that finally starts to soften the Landrys’ anger. It doesn’t erase their grief, but it opens the door to something the book has been building toward the whole time: the possibility that Kenna could be allowed back into Diem’s life, not as an outsider, but as her mother.

Reminders of Him Ending Explained

By the final chapters, Reminders of Him brings together three separate threads: Kenna’s relationship with Diem, Kenna’s relationship with Ledger, and Kenna’s relationship with Grace and Patrick. All three resolve in a way that’s hopeful without pretending the past didn’t happen.

The ending hinges on the truth about the accident finally coming out in full, and on Ledger making the difficult choice to help Grace and Patrick actually understand Kenna’s side of the story instead of only seeing her as the person who took their son from them. Once that happens, the walls the Landrys built around Diem start to come down, piece by piece.

By the close of the book, Kenna is no longer fighting from the outside. She has a real, ongoing relationship with her daughter, she has earned a fragile but genuine peace with the Landrys, and she has found something she didn’t expect to find again: a future with someone who actually knew and loved Scotty too.

What Happened to Scotty? The Truth About the Accident

This is one of the most searched questions about the book, and for good reason. The accident is the event the entire story orbits around, but readers don’t get the full picture right away.

Here’s what the book reveals:

• Kenna and Scotty were together on the night of the crash.
• For years, Kenna believed Scotty died instantly, and she carried that belief, along with her guilt, into her years in prison.
• The devastating truth that comes out later in the book is that Scotty did not die immediately. He survived for a period of time after the crash before he passed away.
• This detail matters enormously because it changes how Kenna, the Landrys, and readers understand the nature of what happened that night and where responsibility actually lies.
• Kenna’s guilty plea and her time in prison were tied to the accident, but the book makes clear that the full truth is more complicated and more painful than the simple version of events the town believed for years.

The book deliberately avoids painting this as a simple story of a reckless woman who caused a tragedy. It asks readers to sit with the fact that grief and guilt often distort how a story gets told, and that the people closest to a tragedy rarely have all the facts, even years later.

Does Kenna Reunite With Diem?

Yes. One of the most emotionally important payoffs of the book is that Kenna does not lose her daughter forever.

The path there is slow and far from guaranteed. For most of the book, Kenna only gets small, supervised windows of time with Diem: a T-ball game here, a short visit there. Diem doesn’t immediately understand who Kenna is to her, which is its own quiet heartbreak for Kenna to sit with.

By the end of the story:

• Kenna has rebuilt a genuine, loving relationship with Diem.
• Diem knows who her mother is and has a real place for Kenna in her life.
• Diem continues to live with Grace and Patrick, but Kenna is no longer shut out. She becomes a consistent, welcomed presence rather than a stranger fighting for scraps of time.

It’s not framed as Kenna suddenly winning full custody and taking Diem away. It’s framed as something more realistic and, in many ways, more moving: a family expanding to make room for Kenna, instead of forcing her back out.

Do Kenna and Ledger End Up Together?

Yes. Kenna and Ledger’s relationship is the emotional core of the romance side of the book, and it does resolve into a real, lasting relationship.

Their connection develops slowly and carefully, which makes sense given how much is at stake. Ledger isn’t just risking his own heart. He’s risking his relationship with the Landrys, his role in Diem’s life, and his loyalty to Scotty’s memory, all by falling for the woman the family blames for Scotty’s death.

What makes their arc work is that Ledger never fully turns his back on Scotty or the Landrys to be with Kenna. Instead, he becomes the person who helps bridge the gap between Kenna and the family, using what he learns about her, partly through her letters, to help everyone else see her more clearly. By choosing honesty over easy loyalty, he ends up strengthening his relationships instead of destroying them.

By the end of the book, Kenna and Ledger are together, and their relationship is treated not as something that replaces Scotty’s memory, but as something that grew out of shared grief and genuine care for the same people, especially Diem.

Do Grace and Patrick Forgive Kenna?

Yes, though it isn’t instant, and it isn’t framed as forgetting.

For most of the book, Grace and Patrick’s anger toward Kenna feels completely justified from their point of view. They lost their son, and Kenna was there when it happened. Their resistance to letting her near Diem comes from real, raw grief, not simple cruelty.

The shift happens gradually, driven mainly by:

• Ledger advocating for Kenna and pushing the Landrys to actually listen to her side of things.
• Kenna’s letters and journal entries, which reveal the depth of her own grief and love for Scotty, something the Landrys hadn’t been able to see through their own pain.
• The full truth about the accident, which complicates the simple story they’d been holding onto for years.

By the end, Grace and Patrick don’t erase what happened, and the book doesn’t ask them to. Instead, they come to a place of understanding that allows Kenna back into Diem’s life and, eventually, into a version of family that includes all of them.

The Epilogue Explained

The epilogue jumps forward in time and shows readers where everyone ends up once the dust has settled.

Key points from the epilogue:

• Diem continues to live with Grace and Patrick, but she maintains close, ongoing relationships with both Kenna and Ledger. The custody arrangement doesn’t dramatically change, but the emotional walls between everyone are gone.
• Kenna and Ledger are together and have built a life and a new family of their own.
• Kenna and Ledger have a son, and they name him Scotty, a quiet, powerful way of honoring the man whose absence shaped the entire story.
• The choice to name their son Scotty ties together the book’s central ideas about memory, grief, and moving forward without forgetting. It’s less about closing the door on the past and more about carrying Scotty’s memory into a new chapter of life.

The epilogue is designed to answer the question readers are asking by the final page: did any good come out of all this pain? The book’s answer is yes, though the good is earned slowly, and it never asks readers to pretend the tragedy that started everything didn’t matter.

Grief and How It Changes Shape

Reminders of Him doesn’t treat grief as something that resolves on a timeline. Kenna is still grieving Scotty years after his death, and so are Grace and Patrick, just in different, often conflicting ways. The book shows how grief can look like anger in one person and guilt in another, and how those different expressions can keep people from understanding each other even when they’re mourning the same loss.

Motherhood Under Impossible Circumstances

Kenna’s fight to reconnect with Diem is really a story about motherhood stripped of almost every normal advantage. She doesn’t get to raise her daughter day to day. She has to earn small increments of trust, one visit at a time, while everyone around her assumes the worst. The book argues that being a mother isn’t only about proximity or custody paperwork. It’s about persistence, love, and showing up, even when showing up is hard and unwelcome.

Guilt, Responsibility, and Forgiveness

Almost every major character in the book is carrying guilt of some kind: Kenna over the accident, Ledger over his divided loyalties, Grace and Patrick over their own grief-driven anger toward the mother of their granddaughter. Forgiveness in this book isn’t presented as a single dramatic moment. It’s shown as a slow accumulation of small choices to listen, to reconsider, and to let go of a version of the story that was never fully accurate to begin with.

Second Chances and Redemption

Kenna’s entire arc is a redemption arc, but the book is careful not to make her redemption feel too easy or too fast. She has to actually do the work of rebuilding trust, and the people around her have to choose, again and again, whether to give her that chance. This makes the eventual resolution feel earned rather than convenient.

Truth Versus Perception

A recurring idea in the book is how differently a single event can be understood depending on who’s telling the story. The town’s version of what happened to Scotty, the Landrys’ version, and Kenna’s version are all different, and the book slowly closes the gap between them. It’s a reminder that judgment often comes from incomplete information, and that empathy usually requires hearing someone’s full story before deciding what they deserve.

Symbolism and Literary Devices

Kenna’s notebook and letters: The letters Kenna writes, often addressed directly to Scotty, work as both a grieving process and a narrative device. They let readers into Kenna’s internal world in a way her guarded present-day behavior doesn’t, and they eventually become the tool that helps Ledger, and later the Landrys, understand her more fully.

The accident site and memorial: Physical spaces tied to Scotty’s death carry heavy symbolic weight throughout the book. Visiting these places becomes a way for characters to process loss without needing to put it into words.

Diem’s small, everyday moments: Simple childhood details, like a pet turtle or a T-ball game, are used deliberately. They ground the heavier themes of grief and guilt in something ordinary and hopeful, showing that life, especially a child’s life, keeps moving forward even in the middle of adult heartbreak.

The name Scotty, passed forward: Naming Kenna and Ledger’s son after Scotty in the epilogue is the book’s clearest piece of symbolism. It represents carrying someone’s memory forward rather than leaving it behind, tying the whole story’s message about grief and healing into a single, quiet gesture.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Reminders of Him about?
It’s a contemporary romance and family drama by Colleen Hoover about Kenna Rowan, a woman released from prison who tries to rebuild a relationship with her young daughter while facing resistance from her late boyfriend’s family.

How does Reminders of Him end?
Kenna successfully rebuilds her relationship with her daughter Diem, earns a fragile peace with Scotty’s parents, and ends up in a committed relationship with Ledger Ward. The epilogue reveals that Kenna and Ledger have a son, whom they name Scotty.

Does Kenna get custody of Diem?
No. Diem continues living with her grandparents, Grace and Patrick, through the end of the book. What changes is that Kenna is welcomed back into Diem’s life as an active, loving presence rather than being kept away.

Do Kenna and Ledger end up together?
Yes. Their relationship develops throughout the book and is confirmed as a lasting partnership in the epilogue, where they are shown together with their son.

What happened to Scotty?
Scotty died as a result of a car accident he was involved in with Kenna. For years, Kenna believed he died instantly, but the book later reveals he survived for a period of time after the crash, a detail that reshapes how the accident is understood.

Why did Kenna go to prison?
Kenna’s prison sentence is connected to the car accident that killed Scotty. The book gradually reveals more context around the circumstances, complicating the simple version of events the town had believed.

Do Grace and Patrick forgive Kenna?
Yes, though it happens gradually. Their forgiveness comes after Ledger helps them understand Kenna’s perspective, partly through her personal letters, and after the fuller truth about the accident comes to light.

Is Reminders of Him a sad book?
Yes, significant parts of it are emotionally heavy, dealing with grief, guilt, and loss. However, it moves toward a hopeful, ultimately uplifting resolution.

Is Reminders of Him a standalone novel?
Yes, it is a standalone book and does not require reading any other Colleen Hoover novels beforehand.

What are the “Dear Scotty” letters in Reminders of Him?
They refer to the journal entries Kenna writes throughout the book, addressed to her deceased boyfriend Scotty. These entries reveal her private grief and memories, and they eventually play a role in helping other characters understand her side of the story.

Is the Reminders of Him movie faithful to the book?
The 2026 film adaptation, directed by Vanessa Caswill and starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, follows the same core plot and emotional resolution as the book, though some scenes are naturally condensed for the film’s runtime.

Who plays Kenna and Ledger in the Reminders of Him movie?
Maika Monroe plays Kenna Rowan, and Tyriq Withers plays Ledger Ward in the 2026 Universal Pictures adaptation.

Is Reminders of Him worth reading before watching the movie?
Yes, for readers who want the fuller emotional detail, especially around Kenna’s letters and the slower build of trust with the Landrys, which can be harder to capture fully on screen.

What is the significance of the name Scotty at the end of the book?
Kenna and Ledger name their son Scotty in the epilogue, symbolizing how they carry Scotty’s memory forward into their new life rather than leaving it behind.

What age group or audience is Reminders of Him written for?
It’s written for adult readers, given its mature themes involving grief, addiction, incarceration, and adult relationships.

About This Article

This summary and ending breakdown was researched and written by cross-referencing the original novel’s plot, character arcs, and confirmed details about the 2026 film adaptation from reputable entertainment sources. Every plot point described here reflects the actual events of Colleen Hoover’s Reminders of Him, and no details, characters, or story elements have been invented or altered for this article. The goal of this guide is to give readers, whether new to the book or catching up before the movie, a clear, accurate, and complete resource they can trust.

Conclusion

Reminders of Him is a story about love, loss, and trying again. Kenna makes a big mistake, and it costs her a lot. She loses time with the people she loves most. But this book shows that even after something very sad happens, people can still find hope.

Kenna works hard to be close to her daughter Diem again. She does not give up, even when it is hard and people are mean to her. Ledger helps her, even though it is scary for him too. Slowly, Grace and Patrick start to understand Kenna better and stop being so angry.

By the end, good things happen. Kenna gets to be part of Diem’s life. She falls in love with Ledger. They even have a baby and name him Scotty, so they never forget him.

This story teaches us that forgiveness takes time, but it is worth it. Even after something sad, love can grow again. That is why so many people love Reminders of Him.