Books Like Reminders of Him: 14 Grief, Second-Chance & Single-Parent Romances (2026)
Books like Reminders of Him are what Colleen Hoover readers want after the last chapter, and in 2026 more people than ever got to that last chapter. The film, directed by Vanessa Caswill from a screenplay Hoover co-wrote with Lauren Levine, opened in U.S. theaters on March 13, 2026 with Maika Monroe as Kenna and Tyriq Withers as Ledger, and earned about $89 million worldwide. This list is built around what makes the book hit: a mother who did something unforgivable, a child she has never been allowed to know, a family that cannot let go of its grief and a man caught between them. Grief romance, second chances, single parents and found family, with a heat level on every pick, then the Inferno second-chance reads from our own shelf.
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What Makes Reminders of Him Work
Kenna Rowan pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter after a crash killed her boyfriend, Scotty Landry. Years later she is paroled and goes back to the town where it happened, hoping to meet Diem, the daughter she has never been allowed to know, who has been raised by Scotty’s grieving parents, Grace and Patrick. The one person who might help her is the last person who should: Ledger Ward, Scotty’s lifelong best friend and the man closest to the family. Hoover’s 2022 novel works because nobody in it is wrong to feel what they feel. The romance is a slow, guilty, tender thing, the real question is forgiveness, and the ending earns every tear. It’s open door but moderate, around a three on our scale. The best readalikes keep the grief, the second chance nobody thinks you deserve, a child at the center and a love story that has to fight the past to exist.
Books Like Reminders of Him: More Colleen Hoover
Our Colleen Hoover books in order guide has the full list and every adaptation; these three are the closest to Kenna and Ledger.
Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
Tate Collins meets Miles Archer, the pilot across the hall. They agree to a purely physical arrangement with two rules: she can’t ask about his past and she can’t expect a future. Flashbacks show why. The grief-behind-the-rules structure is the closest thing in Hoover’s catalog to Ledger’s guarded loyalty, and it is widely called her spiciest book.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit
See Ugly Love on Amazon →
November 9 by Colleen Hoover
Fallon and Ben agree to meet on the same date every year, and each meeting reveals more about how their histories are connected. Hoover’s most structurally ambitious romance, with a twist that changes everything and the same theme as Reminders of Him: whether love can survive learning the worst thing someone did.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See November 9 on Amazon →
It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
The sequel to It Ends With Us follows Lily after the first book and adds Atlas’s point of view. Lighter, more hopeful and focused on healing, it’s the Hoover book about what comes after the worst part, which is exactly where Kenna’s story lives.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See It Starts With Us on Amazon →
Grief Romance and Second Chances
Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan
Yasmen and Josiah Wade co-own Grits, a restaurant in Atlanta’s Skyland neighborhood, and they’re divorced. After their son Henry was stillborn and Yasmen fell into severe depression, the marriage broke. Now they’re raising two kids, Kassim and Deja, seeing other people and slowly discovering they may not be finished. The most honest book about grief on this list, with therapy on the page and a second chance that has to be built rather than wished for.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Before I Let Go on Amazon →
The Air He Breathes by Brittainy C. Cherry
Liz is a widow who moves home to Meadows Creek, Wisconsin, with her five-year-old daughter, Emma, after her husband dies in a car accident. Tristan Cole is the man the town warns her about, cold and cruel, carrying survivor’s guilt over the crash that killed his wife and young son. They bond over their losses, until they uncover a connection between their families’ deaths. A car accident, two families and a love story built on the wreckage: the closest structural match to Reminders of Him on this list. Book one of the Elements series.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See The Air He Breathes on Amazon →
Archer’s Voice by Mia Sheridan
Bree comes to a small town in Maine carrying a painful history, and meets Archer, who is carrying his own. Their connection grows through learning how the other communicates and making room for a life bigger than the harm each has survived. A small town with secrets and two people the past has already marked. Our books like Archer’s Voice list has more.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Archer’s Voice on Amazon →
The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez
Two years after losing her fiancé, Sloan finds a stray dog, and the dog’s owner turns out to be a musician about to leave on tour. Grief written with a light touch and a lot of jokes, and a heroine learning that wanting to live again isn’t a betrayal of the person she lost. A film adaptation is in development.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See The Happy Ever After Playlist on Amazon →
A Child at the Center
Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez
Vanessa, a YouTuber living like she might not have long, ends up raising her sister’s baby with help from the buttoned-up lawyer next door. Co-parenting a child who isn’t quite yours, a man who shows up and a heroine who has to let someone in. Our Abby Jimenez books in order guide maps the connections.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Life’s Too Short on Amazon →
Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
Naomi Witt flees her own wedding, lands in Knockemout, Virginia, and is left by her estranged twin with an eleven-year-old, Waylay. Knox Morgan, the town grump who has sworn off entanglements, keeps showing up anyway. A woman suddenly responsible for a child she barely knows, and a hero who chooses both of them. Hotter and funnier than Hoover.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit
See Things We Never Got Over on Amazon →
Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez
Samantha has one perfect day with Xavier, a veterinarian, and then real life gets in the way: a mother who needs full-time care and a thousand miles between them. Family duty against a love story, a heroine who can’t choose herself and a number-one bestseller that leaves you wrecked in the same place Reminders of Him does.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Say You’ll Remember Me on Amazon →
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
Justin and Emma share a curse: whoever they date next finds their soulmate right after. So they date each other for one summer in Minnesota to break it. Underneath the premise is a much heavier story about family instability, caregiving and abandonment, and a heroine who has never been allowed to stay anywhere.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Just for the Summer on Amazon →
Coming Home to the Hardest Place
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
ER doctor Alexis, heir to a surgical dynasty, drives into a ditch outside tiny Wakan, Minnesota, and the man who pulls her out is a twenty-eight-year-old carpenter who runs the town’s bed and breakfast. A woman choosing the life she wants over the one her family decided for her, in a small town that becomes home.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Part of Your World on Amazon →
Beach Read by Emily Henry
January Andrews writes romance, and her belief in love cracked when her father died. Now she’s spending the summer in a beach house next door to Augustus Everett, her literary-fiction rival from college. A genre-swap dare follows. Grief as the engine of a love story, written with Henry’s wit.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See Beach Read on Amazon →
The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker
Calla Fletcher flies from Toronto to Bangor, Alaska, to reconnect with Wren, the bush pilot father she barely knows, after his cancer diagnosis. Jonah, the gruff pilot who works for him, thinks she won’t last a week. A daughter trying to make up for lost years with a parent, a romance that grows out of the hardest season of her life, and an ending that will flatten you.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See The Simple Wild on Amazon →
Reminders of Him: Book vs. Movie
Universal’s adaptation stars Maika Monroe as Kenna Rowan, Tyriq Withers as Ledger Ward, Rudy Pankow as Scotty, Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford as Grace and Patrick Landry, and Lainey Wilson in her film debut as Amy Matthews. Hoover co-wrote the screenplay with Lauren Levine and Vanessa Caswill directed. It opened March 13, 2026, made about $89 million worldwide on a $25 million budget and drew mixed reviews. Read the book first if you can; Kenna’s inner life is the part no film can fully carry.
Read Next: Hotter Picks From Fractal Enigma
Hoover readers come for the grief, the second chances and the people who have to rebuild a life before they can share one. These Fractal Enigma reads keep all of that, guarantee the happy ending and take the heat all the way up.
Grounded — Isla Wilde
Sloane Winters used to be a VP of finance. Now she’s a disgraced fraud suspect hiding at a women’s shelter, fixing leaky drains and trying to remember who she was before a lie destroyed her life. Then a data-obsessed electrician shows her the wall of evidence he has spent fourteen months secretly building to prove it was a lie. Kenna’s story with the verdict reversed: a woman everyone has written off, and a man who fought for her before she knew it. Free with Kindle Unlimited.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Second Chances, Hurt/Comfort, Protector Romance, He Falls First, Blue Collar, Found Family
Burn for Me — Cassie Hart
Ethan Cole doesn’t need help. He’s fine. Sure, his cabin is a disaster, he hasn’t slept in weeks and his nine-month-old daughter won’t stop crying, but he’s handling it. Then Chloe Reyes, the too-cheerful nanny his meddling sister sent, shows up in a rainstorm and refuses to be sent away. A single dad, a baby at the center of everything and a winter storm that won’t let anyone leave.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Single Dad, Nanny Romance, Grumpy/Sunshine, Age Gap, Forced Proximity, Protector Romance
Repeat Booking — Isla Wilde
Six years as a high-end escort taught Sloane Mercer the rules: look perfect, read the room, leave before sunrise. Then Callum Vale starts booking her every Thursday. He lost his wife three years ago, hasn’t been touched since and doesn’t want the fantasy. He wants her. A widower, a woman the world has already judged and a love story neither of them was supposed to be allowed.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Widower Hero, Touch Starved, Escort/Client, Praise Kink, He Falls First, Slow Burn
Start reading Repeat Booking →
A Safe Place to Land — Milo Hart
Henry Cole has a duffel bag, a wedding ring in his coat pocket, a thirteen-year-old daughter who hasn’t answered his texts in six days and, as of this afternoon, no house. The only roof on offer for six weeks belongs to Gabe, the man he left behind years ago. A newly out single dad trying to win back his kid and the second chance he doesn’t think he deserves. MM, with love letters and a found family.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Second Chance, Newly Out Single Dad, Exes Reunited, Forced Proximity, Love Letters, Found Family
Start reading A Safe Place to Land →
FAQ: Books Like Reminders of Him
Is Reminders of Him part of a series?
No. It’s a standalone with a complete ending, so you can read it without any other Hoover book. If you want to keep going, Ugly Love and November 9 are the closest in tone.
Which book should I read after Reminders of Him?
The Air He Breathes for the closest premise, Before I Let Go for the most honest grief, and Say You’ll Remember Me if you want to cry in the same way again.
How spicy is Reminders of Him?
Open door but moderate, around three chilis on our romance spice levels scale. The emotion does more of the work than the explicit detail. The Fractal Enigma picks above run a full five.
When did the Reminders of Him movie come out?
Universal released it in U.S. theaters on March 13, 2026, with Maika Monroe as Kenna and Tyriq Withers as Ledger.
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