Every once in a while, you’ll read a book that is so beautifully descriptive that you can’t help but think “this needs to be turned into a film or tv series!” – well, I’ve read quite a few this year and thought, why not make a blog post about it!
Some of my favorite novels have already been adapted, multiple times in many ways. Little Women, Les Miserables, Emma, Pride and Prejudice…I could go on and on. It’s always a wonderful thing to see your favorite books adapted for the stage or screen, and the books listed here are some that I would absolutely love to see brought to life.
The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin
I am 100% obsessed with this book and the second I started reading it I thought it would make a great mini series! With the book split up into the four seasons already – Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer – it would make sense to adapt this book into a mini series with each episode focusing on one of the seasons. The writing is beautifully vivid, giving the reader all the tools necessary to visualize what is happening and I think it would translate beautifully onto the small screen!
For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering as the atmosphere becomes more erratic. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose rare magic is tied to every season.
In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It’s wild and volatile, and the price of her magic―losing the ones she loves―is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.
In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she’s the only one who can make a difference.
In Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she’s terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.
In Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves… before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.
Links for The Nature of Witches: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
Oh, look! Caitlyn’s obsessed with a book about plants. No one is shocked. While yes, my love of plants has in part fueled my love for this book, it really would make a great film! With it’s gothic and magical vibes, this book practically screams adaptation! I can just imagine what the set for the estate and gardens would look like, and I need it now. Plus, the book is the first in a series and we know how much film studios love a series!
Darkness blooms in bestselling author Kalynn Bayron’s new contemporary fantasy about a girl with a unique and deadly power.
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.
When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined–it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri’s unique family lineage.
When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri’s sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.
From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.
Links for This Poison Heart: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur
I am a firm believer that we always need more rom coms and a film adaptation of Hang the Moon would be the perfect addition to the genre! Since Brenden himself is a lover of rom coms, you know that this one would be filled with all of our favorite rom com tropes and completely adorable!
In a delightful follow-up to Written in the Stars, Alexandria Bellefleur delivers another #ownvoices queer rom-com about a hopeless romantic who vows to show his childhood crush that romance isn’t dead by recreating iconic dates from his favorite films…
Brendon Lowell loves love. It’s why he created a dating app to help people find their one true pairing and why he’s convinced “the one” is out there, even if he hasn’t met her yet. Or… has he? When his sister’s best friend turns up in Seattle unexpectedly, Brendon jumps at the chance to hang out with her. He’s crushed on Annie since they were kids, and the stars have finally aligned, putting them in the same city at the same time.
Annie booked a spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle to spend time with friends before moving across the globe. She’s not looking for love, especially with her best friend’s brother. Annie remembers Brendon as a sweet, dorky kid. Except, the 6-foot-4 man who shows up at her door is a certified Hot Nerd and Annie… wants him? Oh yes.
Getting involved would be a terrible idea—her stay is temporary and he wants forever—but when Brendon learns Annie has given up on dating, he’s determined to prove that romance is real. Taking cues from his favorite rom-coms, Brendon plans to woo her with elaborate dates straight out of Nora Ephron’s playbook. The clock is ticking on Annie’s time in Seattle, and Brendon’s starting to realize romance isn’t just flowers and chocolate. But maybe real love doesn’t need to be as perfect as the movies… as long as you think your partner hung the moon.
Links for Hang the Moon: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop | Indiebound
Dial A For Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Dial A for Aunties has telenovela style tv series written all over it! The storyline is full of drama and comedy and plot twists that would leave viewers dying for more week after week. I could see this being adapted in a style similar to Jane the Virgin which I think would work super well with the books’ writing style.
What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?
You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business—”Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!“—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers.
But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
Links for Dial A for Aunties: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | Indiebound
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
I’m not sure if it’s a book list created by me if I don’t find a way to include If We Were Villains, but let’s be honest, this would make an incredible mini series. I can clearly imagine what the Dellecher campus would look like, what the sets for Julius Caesar and King Lear would look like, and what that infamous beach by The Castle looks like. Plus, the Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet scenes would be INCREDIBLE. This story is so vivid in my mind and I would love to be able to watch it.
Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
Links for If We Were Villains: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland
House of Hollow is the perfect book to turn into a Halloween release mini series! Hauntingly beautiful and filled with such descriptive storytelling and gothic vibes, House of Hollow is practically screaming for an adaptation! I could see this one being shot in a way similar to Stranger Things.
Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.
Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.
As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.
The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.
Links for House of Hollow: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I could put every single Taylor Jenkins Reid novel I’ve read this year on this list, but there’s something about Malibu Rising that screams adaptation at me. Of all her books, I think Malibu Rising has the most “me vibes” so that’s probably why the story speaks to me, but I just think that this would be a really great series, probably on HBO and filmed similarly to Big Little Lies. Also, the song Personal Cathedrals by Aly & AJ is PERFECT for this book and would 100% be the theme song.
Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them… and what they will leave behind.
Links for Malibu Rising: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
For me personally, the characters of These Violent Delights leap off the page and drag you into their story and hold on to you long after the book is finished, which is a wonderful thing for film/tv. Chloe Gong’s version of 1920’s Shanghai is so fascinating and I need to see that world brought to life on screen! And, if we’re being honest, I’m always here for more Romeo and Juliet adaptations.
The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.
A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.
But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.
Perfect for fans of The Last Magician and Descendant of the Crane, this heart-stopping debut is an imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs and a monster in the depths of the Huangpu River
Links for These Violent Delights: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | Indie Bound
Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado
Not many books in recent years have really hit home as much as Fat Chance, Charlie Vega has. While my experiences haven’t been exactly the same as Charlie’s, I saw so much of myself in her. This is the kind of story that I needed as a teenager and I would love to see it adapted and reach an even wider audience of young girls and boys who are going through the same things that Charlie is.
Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.
Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.
Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.
People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it’s hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn’t help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.
But there’s one person who’s always in Charlie’s corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing–he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.
A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.
Links for Fat Chance, Charlie Vega: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | IndieBound | Bookshop
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
As we know, I love dark academia and will watch or read pretty much anything that has even a hint of dark academia. Ace of Spades left me completely breathless after I read it and I can only imagine what a tv adaptation would be like! Additionally, there is a severe lack of characters of color in the dark academia genre – both in literature and visual media – which makes this story all the more important.
An incendiary and utterly compelling thriller with a shocking twist that delves deep into the heart of institutionalized racism, from an exceptional new YA voice.
Welcome to Niveus Private Academy, where money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because anonymous texter, Aces, is bringing two students’ dark secrets to light.
Talented musician Devon buries himself in rehearsals, but he can’t escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Head girl Chiamaka isn’t afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power.
Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they’re planning much more than a high-school game…
Links for Ace of Spades: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Truthfully, I could add more books to this list (maybe a part 2 will come at some point) because I’ve read so many great books this year that I think would make wonderful adaptations. I had a lot of fun working on this post and I hope that you enjoyed it!
What are some books that you’d love to see adapted? Let me know in the comments!
My life won’t be complete with a These Violent Delights adaption lol, it is just too good of a book and plot to never get adapted. Great post!
Yessssss! I want one so bad! And thank you 🙂