Reminders Of Him
Welcome to February's pick 2022
After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild. Everyone in her daughter’s life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself.
The only person who hasn’t closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna’s daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna’s life, both would risk losing the trust of everyone important to them.
The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.
(source goodreads)
At 26, Kenna is released from prison after serving five years for the death of her boyfriend, Scotty. Despite the risks, she returns to her hometown, determined to meet her daughter, Diem, who was born while she was in prison and is now being raised by Scotty’s parents.
A Fateful Meeting
On her first night back, Kenna, feeling lost and out of place, visits her favorite old bookstore, only to find it’s been converted into a bar. She meets the owner, Ledger Ward, a former pro football player and one of Scotty’s closest friends. Unaware of her identity, Ledger is drawn to the sad-eyed woman, and a connection forms between them. To avoid suspicion, Kenna introduces herself as “Nicole.” The two grow closer over the next few weeks, as Kenna takes a job at a grocery store and Ledger struggles with his growing feelings for her, knowing she is the woman everyone in town blames for Scotty’s death.
The Restraining Order and a Deeper Connection
Kenna’s attempt to meet her daughter by going directly to the Landrys’ home is thwarted by Ledger, who physically removes her, explaining that the town’s perception of her as a heartless monster would make such a meeting impossible. Heartbroken, Kenna’s determination to meet Diem without disrupting her life leads to a restraining order. As she confides in Ledger about her pain, their connection deepens, and they fall in love. Ledger’s recent breakup with his fiancé, who was uncomfortable with his involvement in Diem’s life, makes him more open to his feelings for Kenna.
A Second Chance
Ledger’s bartender, Roman, urges him to reconsider his harsh judgment of Kenna, reminding him of his own past of giving people second chances. When Scotty’s parents learn of Ledger’s relationship with Kenna, they force him to choose. Kenna reveals her secret to Ledger: during her time in prison, she wrote over 300 letters to Scotty. She reads one to him, finally revealing the truth of the accident. Both she and Scotty had been drinking, and the car skidded into a ditch. Kenna, in shock and believing Scotty was dead, walked home, only to discover the next day that he had lived for six hours after the crash.
Ledger, now understanding Kenna’s grief and the town’s misjudgment, is determined to help her. He shows the letter to Grace, Scotty’s mother, who, after years of demonizing Kenna, forgives her. Grace meets Kenna at her apartment, and they embrace in a tearful reconciliation.
A New Beginning
Grace introduces Kenna to Diem, and they instantly connect. The novel concludes two years later, with Kenna and Ledger living together across the street from the Landrys. Diem still lives with her grandparents to maintain stability, but she regularly stays with Kenna and Ledger. They have a son together, whom they name Scotty, a symbol of their new, blended family and a testament to their journey of forgiveness and healing.
Personal insight
What It Feels Like to Read This
I’ll be upfront about something: I came to Colleen Hoover late. Hoover wasn’t on that shelf. When the BookTok wave finally reached me and everyone including people with absolutely no business holding a novel was crying over Reminders of Him, I rolled my eyes a little. I am not the target audience for weeping over a paperback romance.
And then I read it with the girls, and it was Ok.
What got me wasn’t the romance though I won’t pretend Ledger Ward isn’t a very effective literary invention. What got me was Kenna’s specific kind of exhaustion: the exhaustion of trying to prove, day after day, that you are not the worst thing you ever did. I’ve never been to prison. I’ve never lost a child. But I am in my forties, living alone, and I know something about carrying the weight of choices you can’t undo. About walking into rooms where people have already decided who you are. About working twice as hard to be seen as half as worthy. In the Dominican Republic, we have a saying , el que dirán, the weight of what people will say. Kenna is crushed under it for 335 pages, and Hoover makes you feel every pound.
“Hoover doesn’t let Kenna off the hook and that’s exactly why you root for her so hard.”
What I appreciated most, is how Hoover handles the question of motherhood without sentimentalizing it. Kenna doesn’t deserve her daughter simply because she loves her and the book is wise enough to know that. She has to earn that back, painfully, page by page.
And Ledger, complicated, loyal, grieving Ledger, is the kind of man who feels genuinely rare in fiction: someone whose goodness costs him something. His growing feelings for Kenna aren’t weightless or easy. They are a betrayal of someone he loved, and Hoover refuses to let him forget that. That moral tension is what elevates this beyond a standard second-chance romance into something that actually sticks to your ribs.
Character Analysis
Kenna Rowan
Kenna Rowan’s character is defined by a single, tragic mistake and her journey to find redemption. Her name, which means “one born of fire,” foreshadows the emotional trial she endures. After serving five years in prison for the death of her boyfriend, Scotty, Kenna returns to her hometown to meet her daughter, Diem. The town and Scotty’s family have demonized her, and she initially lacks the self-esteem to face them. She even pretends to be “Nicole,” a safe, anonymous version of herself.
The core of her journey is her struggle for a second chance, which requires her to not only seek forgiveness from others but also from herself. The tipping point in the novel is when she shares a letter with Ledger, confessing the painful truth of the accident without making excuses. This act of vulnerability is the key to her freedom, allowing her to finally embrace her true identity. By the novel’s end, she is able to forgive herself and finds joy in her new life with Ledger and Diem, seeing reminders of Scotty as a source of love rather than pain.
Ledger Ward
Ledger Ward’s character is defined by his fairness and ability to maintain emotional balance, much like the financial tool his name suggests. He’s a former football player who, after a career-ending injury, returns to his hometown to run a bar. While the rest of the town, including Scotty’s parents, see Kenna as a heartless monster, Ledger is the only one willing to look beyond her single mistake and see the entire person.
He forms a complex relationship with Diem, acting as a surrogate father and friend, a role that cost him his engagement. This selflessness and willingness to care for others are central to his character. Despite having every reason to be bitter about his own past, he extends the same empathy and kindness to Kenna that he offers the other misfits who frequent his bar. Through his relationship with Kenna, Ledger’s initial judgment transforms into love, and he finds his heart in the process.
Scotty Landry
Scotty Landry is more of a memory or a ghost than a physical character in the novel. He haunts the lives of those he left behind, and his memory, once a source of joy, has become a source of sadness and a reason for the surviving characters to remain stagnant. Ledger, Kenna, and Scotty’s parents are all trapped by his absence, unable to move forward with their lives.
Scotty’s parents have created a simplistic, black-and-white world where Scotty is a hero and Kenna is a villain. Kenna is unable to break free from her guilt, evidenced by the hundreds of letters she writes to him. Ledger, too, feels he is betraying his best friend by falling in love with Kenna. It is only when each character is able to accept Scotty for what he was—an imperfect person—that they can move on and rediscover the joy of having known him.
Diem Landry
Diem Landry is a precocious and lovable child who serves as a template for how to live in an imperfect world. Her name, which means “day,” reflects her nature. She doesn’t dwell on the past or smolder with resentment over her parents’ absence. Her desire to learn to fence, an activity that requires quick, agile, and acrobatic movements, symbolizes her ability to adapt to unexpected events and challenges.
Diem’s reunion with Kenna is surprisingly matter-of-fact, lacking the emotional drama of the rest of the novel. She accepts Kenna as her mother without question, displaying a grace and maturity beyond her years. This acceptance is not a sign of indifference but a testament to her character. For Kenna, Diem’s presence is a quiet blessing, a smooth entry into a life she thought she had lost, proving that it is possible to move forward without being anchored by regret.
Will Kenna be able to get her daughter back?
About the author
Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty two novels and novellas. Hoover’s novels fall into the New Adult and Young Adult contemporary romance categories, as well as psychological thriller.
Colleen founded The Bookworm Box, a charity subscription service and bookstore, with her family in 2015. The Bookworm Box is a subscription service that provides readers with an exciting opportunity to receive signed novels in the mail each month from authors all over the world. All profits from the subscription service are donated to various charities each month.
Food & Drink Pairings
This book will make you feel things you weren’t prepared for. Here’s what to have close by comfort when you need it, something sharp when the book earns it.
Topics in the book
The Power of Forgiveness
In this novel, forgiveness is a human act, not a divine one. It’s an acknowledgment that people are imperfect and make mistakes, even when they have good intentions. Kenna, having served five years for involuntary vehicular manslaughter, needs forgiveness from Scotty’s parents, her daughter, her community, and, most importantly, herself.
The narrative reveals that Kenna has paid a price far exceeding her actions on the night of the accident. Her emotional detachment during the trial, which the town mistook for indifference, was a state of shock and grief. The story builds toward a moment of profound emotional validation on Mother’s Day, as Kenna, a mother herself, seeks forgiveness from Grace, Scotty’s mother. The moment Grace reads Kenna’s poignant letter, their years of pain and blame dissolve into a shared understanding. They both feel the power of forgiveness, and Grace declares that a sense of peace has washed over her. Their final embrace, mother to mother, signifies a new beginning, as they agree to “go forward together” for Diem’s sake. This allows Kenna to finally forgive herself, a critical step toward healing.
The Struggle for a Second Chance
The novel is ultimately about Kenna’s struggle for a hard-earned second chance. Two years after her release, she has a new life. She is part of Diem’s life, living with Ledger, and has a new son named Scotty. Kenna’s journey to this new life is a testament to accountability and self-reflection. She doesn’t seek to be exonerated; instead, she accepts responsibility for her actions, understanding the gravity of her poor choices.
Kenna’s time in prison and her separation from her daughter provide her with a profound moral clarity. As one of her fellow inmates wisely advises, Kenna must choose to “live in [her] sadness” rather than “die in it.” The novel chronicles her evolution, symbolizing her acceptance by returning to the site of the accident to replant a cross she had previously uprooted. This act signifies her coming to terms with her past and embracing her future.
The Toxic Attachment to the Past
The characters in the novel are initially entombed by their memories, allowing the past to poison their present and prevent a viable future. Ledger, Kenna, Grace, and Patrick all “died” emotionally the night Scotty died. Ledger’s attachment to Scotty’s memory and his role in Diem’s life prevents him from moving forward with his own. Kenna’s obsession with the past is evident in the hundreds of letters she writes to Scotty. Similarly, Grace and Patrick’s hearts have been hardened by their grief, making them lack empathy and sympathy.
The novel suggests that the only way to heal is to embrace all moments of the past, both good and bad, instead of fixating on the tragedy. In the end, the characters are able to do this. Ledger builds a new life with Kenna and a new son, while still loving Diem. The Landrys welcome Kenna into their family, and Kenna is finally able to smile when she thinks of Scotty. By reconciling with the past, the characters are able to move on and find happiness in the present.
Locations & the Stories They Hold
Hoover sets this novel in a small fictional town in Colorado but the emotional geography it maps is universal. These are the real and imagined places this book lives in.
The unnamed town in Reminders of Him is quintessentially Colorado insular, scenic, long on memory and short on forgiveness. The kind of place where everyone knows what happened and no one forgets. That claustrophobia is essential to the novel: Kenna can’t escape her past because she literally cannot escape the geography.
Colorado has over 400 ghost towns former mining communities that were once thriving and then simply emptied out. There’s something haunting about a state built on boom, bust, and the question of whether people stay or go.
The bar is the novel’s true living room the place where grief is served alongside drinks, where Kenna and Ledger first start circling each other, where the tension between loyalty and longing is most visible. Hoover uses it brilliantly as neutral territory that isn’t actually neutral at all.
In the U.S., the average bar employs between 5 and 15 people and has a turnover rate among the highest of any industry. There’s a specific transience to bar life people pass through, things are confessed, and most of it stays between the walls.
We never see Kenna’s prison directly, but it never leaves the novel. Five years of absence haunt every scene she’s i,n in the way she holds herself, the way she flinches, the way she’s learned to expect rejection. The prison is the novel’s ghost, its invisible setting.
The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. Approximately 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal record, and studies show the hardest part of reentry often isn’t legal it’s social. Being let back into ordinary life is a different kind of sentence.
Little Scottie’s world her bedroom, her routines, the places where she’s been raised without her mother represents the emotional stakes of the entire novel. Kenna circles this world without being allowed inside it, and the spaces Scottie inhabits are charged with everything Kenna has missed and cannot get back.
Research in developmental psychology shows that children as young as three can form complex emotional memories tied to specific places playgrounds, kitchens, specific rooms. Place-memory and emotional bonding are deeply intertwined in early childhood, which makes the geography of Scottie’s life literally constitutive of who she is.
