Five feet apart – 10 reasons the book’s better than the movie

Hey Happy bookworms!

Anyone remember this series? *silence* yeah, it’s been a while *gulps* but y’all know I’m not much of a movie-watcher!
Anyway, I just finished the adorable five feet apart so I had to resurrect this series & watch the movie! I watched it with my mum & I’m sure I really annoyed her with my note taking (sorry mum!)

But yeah, the usually: this post is in good humour & of course I understand that the movie can’t include everything that the book does. There will be spoilers about the book & movie because of course, there had to be (sorry!) and also just a lot of rambling from me!

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1. We missed some absolutely gems of lines like “Newsflash. Girls can code” (Like, why wasn’t that in there?!)
2. We didn’t get Stella singing! Like, we got Abby & Will and we even got a little glimpse of what I assume was the time in the home video bit at the end BUT WE DIDN’T ACTUALLY GET IT!
3. We didn’t get the whole white flower joke – Stella wears a white rose to their date but it’s never explained that she just took it out a vase 😂 (even though we see the vase & it would’ve been so easy!). Thing is though, this means that in Stella’s treasure hunt later the clue (roses are red…or are they?) means nothing? Oh wait, no, LET’S MAKE IT MEAN BALLOONS?! Like, what?!
4. Speaking of balloons, they’re yellow in the book but purple in the movie? This isn’t really a better/worse thing just an I wonder why?
5. We didn’t get any Stella hearts! It’s a thing in the book that she draws hearts around, she drew one on Poe’s whiteboard & her & Will draw them in the condensation in the windows.
6. Side character story arcs – I mean, they always suck in movies. Actually, we got more Poe in some places which was surprising but we definitely got less in other places:
   • Will & his mum – they have a really bad relationship in the book because of a misunderstanding where Will thinks his mum’s trying to not let him live his life when really she’s just trying to keep him alive. This DOES NOT happen in the movie at all! We also never get to see Will’s mum’s present to him, which is actually really sweet, even though we do see the box & the note. I feel like this would actually be a really confusing moment if you hadn’t read the book or at least mean absolutely nothing.
   • Will & Poe – they have a scene in the hospital’s church where they talk about Poe & his life (basically the context to Poe visiting his parents) and it reveals his money problems (which is also why it makes more sense when he complains about how his partner will get to pay his medical bills with Stella) and also about how his parents were deported. Will also has the typical rich guy response to this but at least he’s self-aware of it & Poe quickly shuts him down.
   • Stella’s parents – we get a little divorce comment from Stella at the beginning (“divorce doesn’t look good on you”) but then suddenly her parents are BFFs?! It’s never explained how they’re suddenly ok now. In the book we have our awkward ‘What colour rug should I have if my bathroom is this colour?’ and also the Barb telling them both off conversation when Stella’s in surgery.
7. In the book, Stella has serious vacation envy of her friends & this just added another layer to how being in hospital sucks. It also helped her connect to Will & his ‘I want to visit all the places I’ve been in hospital in but properly”
8. When Stella’s in the water, she wants to go back up but then she sees Patches (her panda) and she goes after him first, because of this she’s in the water too long and she hallucinates and sees & talks to Abby but this whole bit is missed out in the movie! Which sucks because it’s the bit that gives Stella closure that Abby wasn’t in pain when she died. It’s weird though because when Stella goes in for surgery for the first time in the movie she has a small hallucination in Abby’s picture but this isn’t actually in the book.
9. We got a bit of Stella’s app but we never got the iconic gif of the happy dancing pill bottle emoji!
10. And finally, we didn’t get the epilogue! I missed the epilogue in the movie, I thought it would have been just a nice way to end it, it shows them both doing the traveling that they’ve always wanted to do.

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Despite all that, I really loved the movie – it was totally adorable! And it had some great things too, mainly Will moments like Will’s sassy thumbs up at the beginning, him angry shading (and just all of the art in general) and Will being a ferret kid 😂 It also had such great make up! Like, at the pool scene you could see how skinny they looked with their ribs showing and the dark bags under their eyes and the scars.

So yeah, hope you enjoyed this post! Have you seen the movie? Watched the book? What did you think?

Also, thank you so much to Xandra who nominated me for the most friendly book blogger award – it means a lot 💕