Which Divorce Romance Novels Have Been Adapted Into Movies?

Divorce romance novels with movie adaptations are everywhere lately, but finding ones with emotional depth feels tricky. Which adaptations nailed that bittersweet vibe from the source material?
2025-08-19 20:09:09
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Pontus Gustafsson
Pontus Gustafsson
There are a few popular ‘divorce romance’ stories in film currently like ‘The Divorcee’ and ‘It Ends with Us’ which are recently adapted to film. What I’ve been reading for a full ‘divorce romance’ story in web novel form is ‘He Gave Her the Wedding, I Gave Him Divorce’. The story started when the divorce papers were signed. It follows the ex-wife’s journey in rebuilding herself and her career whilst the powerful ex-husband is forced to come to terms with his loss as he sees her succeed without him.
2026-08-03
Aaron
Aaron
Movies based on romance novels with second chance romance stories are my favorites. When I saw “Something Borrowed” was being made into a movie with Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin, I was excited because the book is so cute. The way “The Divorce” by César Aira was adapted into “The Secret in Their Eyes” is also really impressive. It shows how divorce can lead to unexpected secrets and I like that this movie has a mix of sadness and hope.

'Its Complicated' doesn't originate from a novel. But the funny movie starring Meryl Streep very creatively depicts post-divorce dating. The plot of the movie ‘Gone Girl’ is based on the thriller by Gillian Flynn. It shows marriage disintegration in the most terrifying way possible. One can draw the conclusion from these movies that stories about divorce can be richly deployed on both film and book.
2025-08-21
Isla
Isla
I’ve always been a huge fan of romance novels, and their adaptations to film. For some reason, novels about divorce seem to make better films than their counterparts about people finding love. ‘The Wife Between Us’ by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen is one of my favorite novels, and even though The Girl on the Train isn’t a direct adaptation of The Wife Between Us, the psychological thriller captures the messiness of people and relationships post-divorce really well.

The ‘First Wives Club’ by Olivia Goldsmith is another great example. The movie, with a good dollop of humor, is about three women getting their own back on their ex-husbands. ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ by Avery Corman is another excellent and very moving novel about the scenes leading up to a divorce, with a special focus on the hair-raising and often heart-breaking scenes of the ensuing custody battle. ‘The Story of Us’ is another good example of a movie that explores a failed marriage and it has a good dose of nostalgia for the couple and even the spectators. The only reason I mention this is because it is not a novel that has been translated into a movie.
2025-08-21
Faith
Faith
Another great example of a novel on divorce adapted to the movies is ‘The War of the Roses’ by Warren Adler, a dark comedy. Also Nora Ephron’s ‘Heartburn’ has been turned into a movie with Meryl Streep playing a pregnant woman whose husband is having an affair with her. As opposed to the two examples above, ‘The Squid and the Whale’ is a movie based on part of the autobiographical work of the same name. It presents the views of children going through a difficult divorce with painful honesty.
2025-08-21
Willa
Willa
In my viewing of book-to-movie adaptations I find that the worst genre to adapt to film are the divorce romance novels. The emotions evoked in such a small amount of space are difficult to transfer to the big screen. Many classics have been made into movies that portray certain situations of divorce so beautifully such as “The Bridges of Madison County” by Robert James Waller which I found a beautiful but heart-wrenching love affair between two divorced people.

Marriage Story is another great example of how so many divorce memoirs are being used to make this sort of film today. Though these aren’t direct adaptations of specific memoirs of divorce, they show how so very powerful stories of divorce are across all media – often with even more bite on screen than on the page.
2025-08-25
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