Robinne Lee, Author of ‘The Idea of You,’ on What the Adaptation Got Wrong

Author Robinne Lee says the film adaptation of her novel "The Idea of You" stripped her heroine of depth and rewrote her story's bittersweet ending into a fairy tale. Her next book, "Crash Into Me," aims to tell a messier, more honest love story.

Robinne Lee is voicing her frustration over several major changes made when her 2017 novel was adapted for the screen. The film, released in 2024, starred "The Princess Diaries" actress Anne Hathaway and "Masters of the Universe" actor Nicholas Galitzine.

Hathaway played protagonist Solène Marchand, while Galitzine portrayed her love interest, Hayes. In a recent interview with Vulture, Lee revealed that she wasn't involved in the later stages of developing the Amazon Prime Video film.

She explained that certain aspects of Solène's character diverged from how she'd envisioned them on the page.

Lee took particular issue with the decision to transform Solène from an "international art gallerist" into a "California everymom" who happens to run a gallery, saying, "They minimized her in every way."

The ending underwent an even more dramatic overhaul.

In the film, Solène and Hayes — frontman of the fictional boy band August Moon — end up together. In the novel, however, Solène walks away from the relationship, telling Hayes she was never in love with him, only with the "idea" of him.

Lee may have been unhappy with the shift, but plenty of fans embraced the film's rewritten conclusion.

"Ngl I liked the movie ending more...i understand in life we dont always get the happy ending but thats what I want from my fiction [sic]," one viewer wrote on Instagram.

"Idc what they got wrong bc they fixed the ending. I hated the book ending. I read to get hea or hfn. If I wanted real life I'd read non fiction," another commented. A third fan didn't hold back either, saying, "Hated the book ending I threw it across the room. Loved the Movie better than the book!"

"The movie was amazing it doesn't matter what happened in the book's ending because the movies ending was so good," someone else added.

Lee's forthcoming novel, "Crash Into Me," due out July 7, also centers on a love story, much like "The Idea of You" — but this time, she's hoping readers walk away with a different takeaway.

"I like love, I like falling in love, I like romance, I like sex," Lee told Vulture. "I like writing about those things, but I'm also trying to be more honest about the pain that sometimes accompanies that, and the uncertainty, and the betrayal."

"Crash Into Me" leans further into that complexity than her earlier work. According to its synopsis, the novel follows photographer Cecilia Chen, who is married to a celebrated French director and has relocated to Los Angeles, where she's raising her children.

Everything shifts when Cecilia is involved in a car accident and finds herself face-to-face with the last person she expected: Anouk Ferrand, a model she met two decades earlier during a trip to Mexico.

The collision forces Cecilia to reckon with her past — including a former love with Anouk — and reexamine her marriage and her place within it.

"I have been crafting Cecilia Chen's story for well over a decade, taking multiple breaks along the way — occasionally for years at a time," Lee, who is also an actor and producer, previously shared about her writing process.

She continued, "But in 2019, I began to work on this current iteration — a seductive narrative about power, privilege, betrayal and desire, viewed from a perspective we don't often see."

Lee has long championed stories that spotlight sides of women rarely explored onscreen, and "Crash Into Me" gave her the chance to do just that.

"I wanted to write stories for us because I knew what my friends who were in their 40s were doing, and how full their lives were," she said at the time. "Your body doesn't just shut down and die because you've had kids, or you've gotten married. You're still this living, vibrant, thriving human being."