This past year has been a huge year for book to screen adaptations, with Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” predicted to be the first big box office hit of 2026…

Other adaptations may have taken the ‘flop’ list though, with recent movies The Housemaid, Die My Love and People We Meet On Vacation being out performed by their authors.

Experts at McLuck were keen to uncover what has been the best and worst most recent book-to-screen adaptations by comparing the book’s GoodReads rating to the on-screen IMDb rating.

Best to worst book on-screen adaptations of the past year

	Book	Author	GoodReads Score /5	IMDb Score /10	% Between Review Scores
1st	Heated Rivalry	Rachel Reid	4.31	8.9	-3.1%
2nd	Frankenstein	Mary Shelly	3.91	7.5	4.3%
3rd	Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West	Gregory Maguire	3.51	6.7	4.8%
4th	Hamnet	Maggie O’Farrell	4.2	8	5.0%
5th	We Were Liars	E. Lockhart	3.65	6.8	7.4%
6th	Shy	Max Porter	3.57	6.4	11.6%
7th	Die, My Love	Ariana Harwicz	3.43	6.1	12.5%
8th	The Map That Leads to You	Joseph Monninger	3.56	6.2	14.8%
9th	People We Meet on Vacation	Emily Henry	3.85	6.7	14.9%
10th	The Thursday Murder Club	Richard Osman	3.86	6.5	18.8%
11th	The Long Walk	Richard Bachman(Pseudonym – Stephen King)	4.01	6.7	19.7%
12th	The Running Man	Richard Bachman(Pseudonym – Stephen King)	3.88	6.4	21.3%
13th	The Housemaid	Freida McFadden	4.27	6.9	23.8%
14th	The Woman in Cabin 10	Ruth Ware	3.72	5.8	28.3%
15th	My Oxford Year	Julia Whelan	3.86	5.9	30.8%
16th	Regretting You	Colleen Hoover	4.1	6	36.7%
17th	The Twisted Ones	Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley	4.09	5.2	57.3%
18th	The Man in My Basement	Walter Mosley	3.68	4.6	60.0%

Dubbed as a global phenomenon with no fancy big names or big budget, the on-screen adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry ranks as the best book to screen adaptation in the past year. The book became a fan favourite in 2019, being the second instalment of Reid’s ice hockey romance novels, this one following the secret romantic relationship between rival hockey stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. The book scored an impressive 4.31 out of 5 on GoodReads and a whopping 8.9 on IMDb, the on-screen adaptation outperformed the book by 3.1%. 

The only on-screen adaptations to out-perform the book

Interestingly, only seven books out of the entire study had on-screen adaptations that rated higher than their book. To see the full breakdown of the book to TV and film adaptations, please see here.  

	Book	Author	GoodReads Score /5	IMDb Score /10	% Between Book and On-Screen
1st	Normal People	Sally Rooney	3.81	8.4	-9.3%
2nd	Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West	Gregory Maguire	3.51	7.3	-3.8%
3rd	One Day	David Nicholls	3.85	8	-3.8%
4th	Heated Rivalry	Rachel Reid	4.31	8.9	-3.1%
5th	Fire & Blood	George R. R. Martin	4.04	8.3	-2.7%
6th	Slow Horses	Mick Herron	4.05	8.3	-2.4%
7th	The Fall of the House of Usher	Edgar Allan Poe	3.87	7.9	-2.0%

McLuck can reveal the 2020 BBC Three hit ‘Normal People’ out-performed the book (by 9.3%!) – one of seven on-screen adaptations in the study to do so! Set in Sligo and Dublin, ‘Normal People’ follows the complicated relationship between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal). The psychological romance drama blew up in the height of lockdown and was rated an impressive 8.4 out of 10 on IMDb, with GoodReads scoring the book 3.8 out of 5.

The second best on-screen adaption is Wicked (part one). The box office smash from 2024 rated 7.3 out of 10 on IMDb, and even secured Ariana Grande a first time Oscar nomination and a third for Cynthia Erivo. The book ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’ was rated 3.51/5 on GoodReads, suggesting part one of the franchise rated 3.8% higher. 

Dubbed as a “flawless romcom” the Netflix sensation ‘One Day’ is the third on-screen adaptation to out-perform the book. The 2024 limited series tells the decades-spanning love story of Dex (Leo Woodall) and Em (Ambika Mod) as they reunite on the same day every year. Previously made into a film in 2011 (starring Anne Hathaway) scoring just 7/10 – the Netflix adaptation proved to be an even bigger hit with viewers, with a rating of 8/10, and the novel scoring 3.85/5 – a 3.8% increase!