While the first day of each year is often an opportunity to make the traditional good resolutions, Harlan Coben has one to offer you: let yourself be captivated by the adaptation of his best novels for the screen. While on January 1, 2024, he already offered the series on Netflix Double Traphe returned exactly a year later with I miss you. Adapted from his eponymous book, this thriller in five episodes is extremely effective. And if the title, I miss youor Missing You in original version, is well inspired by the song Missing You by John Waite in both the book and the series, some adjustments were inevitably necessary for the screen version. So, what liberties are taken to move from novel to fiction?
I miss you on Netflix: in the book, Kat is not English!
In both the book and the series, we follow Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar), a police officer whose father, also a police officer, was murdered many years before. If on Netflix, Kat is English and part of the British police, in the book she is American. She is also part of the famous NYPD (New York Police Department). She also collaborates with the FBI, notably in resolving the disappearances caused by Titus.
In the novel I miss youJosh is called differently
Whether in the series or the novel, Kat was indeed abandoned by her long-time fiancé, very shortly after the death of her father. And in either case, she finds traces of her ex when her friend Stacey registers him on a dating app. But if in the series, the one who abandoned her 11 years ago (18 years in the book) is called Josh, his name is Jeff in the book. And he is not the only one to have seen his name change: at the start of the series, we witness the kidnapping of Rishi Magari, while in the book it is a certain Gerard Remington, boss of a pharmaceutical company , who is missing.
Harlan Coben says more about Titus in the book
Titus is the main antagonist of the book and the series. In the series, we discover him at the head of a dog breeder and above all a criminal network which manipulates adults via dating applications to then kidnap them and empty their bank accounts before brutally murdering them. In the book, he operates in the same way and also on a farm. But Harlan Coben says more in the 400-page novel: we learn that Titus is a long-time criminal who, before launching the kidnappings, was a pimp.
This character was invented for the series I miss you
In the series, Kat acts with the valuable help of her brigade, made up of Nia (Catherine Ayers), her long-time teammate, and Charlie (Charlie Hamblett), new kid and computer genius. They act under the authority of Stagger, played in the series by Richard Armitage. But in the book, if Stagger is indeed the police chief and a certain “Charles” teams up with Kat, Nia does not appear.
The final resolution is the same in the book and the Netflix series
If, over the course of the investigation, a few detours are taken, the producers of the series, which includes Harlan Coben, have decided to keep the same final outcome. So the identity of Kat's father's killer is the same and is revealed in the same way as in the series. Parker also exists in the novels and is also the long-term lover of Kat's father, although most of the time he is nicknamed “Sugar”.
