2025 has been a monumental year for book-to-screen adaptations, from the release of season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, garnering a whopping 25 million global viewers in its first week alone, to the highly anticipated Wicked Part 2 (Wicked: For Good) scheduled for release in November 2025. 

Inspired by this, the book enthusiasts at Aura Print set out to uncover the best and worst book-to-screen adaptations of all time by comparing 55 books’ GoodReads ratings to the on-screen IMDb ratings.

Key findings:

• Only 1 in 5 of books are actually beaten by their TV/film versions
• The Thursday Murder Club book rated 17% higher than the series, whilst The Summer I Turned Pretty only rated 2.5% higher
• The Princess Diaries only rated 6.4/10 on IMDb; can the new adaptation steal the spotlight?
• The Netflix series outshone Sally Rooney’s Normal People, whilst the Conversations with Friends series was rated 9% worse than the book
• As Twilight celebrates its 20th anniversary, it is ranked as the second-worst on-screen book adaptation, with book ratings 38.5% higher than the film.

The Top 10 On-Screen Adaptations That Outshine the Book

Rank	Book	Author	GoodReads Score /5	IMDb Score /10	Screen Adaptation Rated Higher by (%)
1	The Haunting of Hill House	Shirley Jackson	3.8	8.5	11.5%
2	Normal People	Sally Rooney	3.8	8.4	10.2%
3	Forever…	Judy Blume	3.6	7.7	6.4%
4	Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West	Gregory Maguire	3.5	7.4	5.4%
5	Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption	Stephen King	4.5	9.3	3.6%
=6	A Game of Thrones	George R. R. Martin	4.5	9.2	3.4%
=6	One Day	David Nicholls	3.9	8	3.4%
8	The Fall of the House of Usher	Edgar Allan Poe	3.9	7.9	2.6%
9	Fire & Blood	George R. R. Martin	4.1	8.3	2.5%
10	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	J. R. R. Tolkien	4.4	8.9	1.1%

Aura Print can reveal that only 18% of on-screen adaptations outshone the books. The psychological thriller/horror The Haunting of Hill House (2018), is the best-performing on-screen adaptation, according to viewers. The Netflix series outperformed the book by 11.5% with a highly admirable IMDb score of 8.5 out of 10 compared to the 1959 book by author Shirley Jackson, which garners a GoodReads score of 3.8 out of 10.  

This was the book’s third adaptation, but by far its most highly regarded, with both adaptations called The Haunting falling short on IMDb. The 1963 version scored a solid 7.4, while the 1999 adaptation scored just 5. 

Following close behind in second place is the 2020 BBC Three/Hulu hit Normal People, which outperformed the book by 10.2%.  The psychological romance drama Normal People follows the complicated relationship between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal). The series was rated an impressive 8.4 out of 10 on IMDb, with GoodReads scoring the book 3.8 out of 5. Meanwhile, Rooney’s other hit novel, Conversations with Friends, was also adapted for TV but received lower ratings than the book, with 6.8 on IMDb compared to 3.7 on GoodReads.

In third place, the cute coming-of-age series Forever follows two teenagers who fall in love, the book and modern reimagining of Judy Blume’s famous novel by Netflix (2025), explores the intense, vulnerable, and awkward feelings of first love. The teen drama is rated 7.7/10 on IMDb – 6.4% higher than its 3.6/5 score on GoodReads.

10 of the Worst On-Screen Film Adaptations 

Rank	Book	Author	GoodReads Score /5	IMDb Score /10	Book Rated Higher by (%)
1	Uglies	Scott Westerfeld	3.8	4.7	63.4%
2	Twilight	Stephenie Meyer	3.7	5.3	38.5%
3	The Changeling	Victor LaValle	3.8	5.8	30.0%
4	It Ends With Us	Colleen Hoover	4.1	6.3	29.8%
5	A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder	Holly Jackson	4.3	6.8	26.2%
6	The Colour Purple	Alice Walker	4.3	6.8	25.9%
7	The Boys in the Boat	Daniel James Brown	4.4	7	25.4%
8	Divergent	Veronica Roth	4.1	6.6	25.2%
9	Nightbitch	Rachel Yoder	3.4	5.5	25.1%
10	Damsel	Evelyn Skye	3.8	6.1	24.9%

Released in 2024 on Netflix, Uglies ranks as the worst book-to-screen adaptation. Based in a futuristic dystopia with enforced beauty standards, a teen named Tally (Joey King) is awaiting mandatory cosmetic surgery and embarks on a journey to find her missing friend. The 2005 book by Scott Westerfeld scored 3.8/5 on GoodReads, but the movie scored just 4.7 on IMDb – a whopping 63.4% difference! 

Following the initial film, the Twilight series has become a worldwide hit and is even set to return to the big screen in October 2025 to celebrate the book’s 20th anniversary.  Despite its cult following and global box office gross of $407M the Twilight film (2008) gets a shockingly low score of 5.3 out of 10 on IMDb, 38.5% lower than Stephanie Meyer’s book rating of 3.7/5 on Goodreads. Meanwhile, the wildly popular series The Vampire Diaries, which was released onto screens just a year later in 2009, received a much better IMDb score of 7.7, but the first book in the series scores lower than its teen romance rival with 3.3/5 on GoodReads.

Released in 2023 on Apple TV, The Changeling ranks as the third-worst book-to-screen adaptation. Set in an alternate New York City, Apollo’s (LaKeith Stanfield) and Emma’s (Clark Backo) love story is a fairy tale until Emma mysteriously vanishes. The book scored 3.8 out of 5 on GoodReads, with the show only scoring 5.8 out of 10 on IMDb – a 30% difference!