Netflix dropped a new sports romance tv show, just in time for the Olympics. Finding Her Edge is climbing the charts on Netflix, and with that comes the realization for many that the show is based on a book of the same name by Jennifer Iacopelli.
Whenever there’s an adaptation of a book, the questions of which is better and how to the compare are quick to follow. In the case of Finding Her Edge [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM], there are plenty of differences that make the book and show feel like two separate experiences without losing the spirit of the book. That tends to happen when you’re taking one relatively short novel and stretching it over eight hours of programming and hoping there will be more in the future.
You don’t have to wait long for the show to diverge from the book. On page, we meet Adriana as a skater, but in the show, she’s been away from the sport since her mom died two years prior. She’s been managing the rink and is well aware of the dire financial situation from the jump. The show escalates some of the ripples of that for the sake of drama, and without spoilers, it does so in hearbreaking ways that amp up the tension throughout the entirety of the show.
Because TV has a different pace than a novel, we don’t get to the fake dating scheme until what feels like much further in the show than in the book. The show spends much more time developing the relationship between Adriana and Brayden, and without any voiceover narration putting us inside her head, the strength of her feelings for Freddie doesn’t really come through. This can leave a viewer a little disoriented with the onset of the love triangle and how she handles it.
Love triangle might be a bit a minimalistic view of the situation, both for the book and the show. In the book, Adriana and Freddie are secretly pining for each other while she’s fake dating Brayden. At the same time, Riley is crushing on Freddie and Elise wants to be with Brayden. In the show, we see most of that, but Freddie and Elise have a moment together, and Riley isn’t portrayed as being romantically interested in her ice dance partner. Either situation is messy, and the show adds additional mess with Mimi and Charlie’s romantic interests.
The sister dynamics are also a bit different from show to page. Mimi isn’t a big part of the novel, so nearly everything relating to her on screen felt fresh. Elise, on the other hand, is part of Adriana’s stress. She has a bit of an attitude in the book, but the show dials everything up and crosses into plain mean instead of just spoiled. Elise isn’t the one who gets injured in the book, so we don’t see her on the sidelines throughout the competition schedule.
Elise is also part of how the fake dating scheme comes to be in the novel. She’s the star of a reality show documenting her journey to the Olympics (which is changed to Worlds for the screen). When the world sees Brayden and Adriana watcing Elise on TV together, that’s when the buzz about them being a good looking couple begins, as opposed to the social media of the show.
There are dozens of other small changes and expansions from the original text that give the show a fresh feel for someone who already read the book. That includes the ending, which sets up a potential second season. Iacopelli said she is currently writing something that those who don’t like where things land might enjoy. The estimates timetable for that release is “next year”, but Iacopelli is hopeful that season two will give us plenty to talk about as the world she built gets to explore new territory.
Hear more from author Jennifer Iacopelli here:
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