The Best Book Adaptations Of 2024 — And What We're Anticipating For 2025

We picked five on-screen projects that stood out for the way they captured the original stories — and five more for 2025 that show incredible promise.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that books are better than their screen adaptations. That fact hasn’t stopped filmmakers from trying to translate the magic on the page to the screen with varying degrees of success, and 2024 certainly had its share of failed attempts. (My least favorite was Prime Video’s watered-down version of “The Idea of You,” and my second-least favorite was Apple’s nonsensical “Palm Royale.”)

However, a handful of book-to-screen adaptations stood out for capturing the spirit of the original stories. Here are my top five adaptations of the year, and which promising adaptations to put on your radar for next year.

Best Romantic Comedy Adaptation: ‘One Day’

Barely a week into 2024, Netflix dropped its 14-part series “One Day,” which was an adaptation of the David Nicholls novel that I never knew that I needed. Given that the bestselling book had already been adapted for the screen in the 2011 movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, another version seemed unnecessary. However, before the end of the couple’s first St. Swithin’s Day (July 15) together, I was hooked.

Like the book and movie, the show follows Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall) for two decades worth of July 15ths in this friends-to-lovers story. The book’s structure naturally fits the pacing of a series, and the unlikely magnetism between Emma and Dexter’s characters makes the show a must-watch for fans of the book. However, I couldn’t list this as the best rom-com adaptation of the year without acknowledging that the ending is a tragedy. (To me, including this as the best rom-com screen adaptation of the year is further proof of how sad the state of rom-coms is right now.)