Hey y'all,

I've been picking up a lot of nonfiction lately. Maybe it's because school is back in session and I'm just craving more and more knowledge. Maybe the nonfiction side of our book club has kicked that side into overdrive for me. Who knows?

Here's what I've been reading:

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

I have to pause this one often, despite how short it is. It's a very heavy read but so important. It's a detailed, first-person account of the last enslaved African that was trafficked to the United States.

How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer

The author kept popping up on my For You page on Instagram and I loved seeing what she had to say about her research process. Linguistics appeals to me in many ways, especially post-colonially, and I'm excited to get more into this one.

Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd

I started the audiobook in the car and immediately realized that I need to switch over to the physical copy because this is a book that I NEED to annotate. It'll likely be a future nonfiction book club pick because it's so well written.

Let me know what you've been reading in the comments!

XoXo,

Rae

Six readers. One missing boy. Two very different versions of the same mystery. And, naturally, six opinions.

We read Andrea Mara’s All Her Fault. Then we watched Peacock’s eight-episode mystery-thriller adaptation. And if there’s one thing we learned from comparing the two, it’s this:

Book-to-screen adaptations are guaranteed to give a book club something to argue about. 😂

Andrea Mara’s 2021 domestic thriller begins with every parent's worst nightmare.

Marissa Irvine arrives at 14 Tudor Grove expecting to pick up her young son, Milo, from his first playdate with a boy from his new school.

Except the woman who answers the door doesn't know Marissa.

She doesn't know Milo.

And she certainly doesn't have him.

From that terrifying setup, Mara builds a twisty mystery involving four women, buried secrets, suspicion, motherhood, guilt, and the question of who is actually responsible for what happened to Milo.

Then Peacock took that story and turned it into an eight-episode mystery-thriller miniseries, relocating the story from Dublin to suburban Chicago and bringing characters to life with a cast led by Sarah Snook and Dakota Fanning.

So we did what any book club with strong opinions would do:

We read it. We watched it. We compared it. And then we debated it.

Here's what the six of us thought.

🚨 Before We Get Started: Spoiler Warning!

Because we're comparing the book and television adaptation, this post discusses plot developments, character changes, and differences between the two versions.

If you haven't finished both All Her Fault and the Peacock series, save this post and come back when you're ready to discuss!

📖 The Book: All Her Fault by Andrea Mara

The premise hooked us immediately.

Marissa arrives to collect Milo from his first playdate.

The wrong woman opens the door.

Milo isn't there.

And suddenly, a seemingly ordinary suburban afternoon becomes a parent's worst nightmare.

Mara takes that simple premise and slowly pulls apart the lives of the people surrounding Milo.

What initially looks like a missing-child mystery becomes something much more complicated as secrets begin surfacing and suspicion starts moving from one woman to another.

One of the things we appreciated most about the novel was how effectively Mara creates that feeling of "everyone knows something, but nobody knows everything."

We kept questioning the characters.

We kept changing our minds.

And more than once, we thought we had figured everything out.

Spoiler:

We had not.

😂

The Dublin setting also gives the novel a distinct atmosphere. There's something particularly unsettling about a seemingly safe, familiar community becoming the backdrop for a child's disappearance.

Everyone is close enough to know everyone else's business…

but apparently not close enough to know the truth.

📺 The Series: All Her Fault on Peacock

The television adaptation premiered on November 6, 2025, as an eight-episode Peacock mystery-thriller miniseries created by Megan Gallagher.

The basic premise remains intact.

Marissa Irvine, played by Sarah Snook, arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate.

The woman who answers the door doesn't recognize her.

She doesn't recognize Milo.

And the nightmare begins.

But the adaptation makes some significant changes.

The biggest one?

We're no longer in Dublin.

The television series moves the story to suburban Chicago.

And that isn't the only change.

The cast includes Dakota Fanning as Jenny, Jake Lacy as Peter Irvine, Michael Peña, Sophia Lillis, Abby Elliott, Jay Ellis, and Daniel Monks, giving the series a larger ensemble through which to explore the mystery.

With eight episodes rather than a few hundred pages, the show also has room to expand relationships, develop characters, introduce additional layers, and allow the mystery to unfold at a different pace.

🇮🇪 Dublin vs. 🇺🇸 Chicago

This was one of the first things we noticed.

The novel's Dublin setting gives the story a very particular identity.

The community feels intimate, familiar, and interconnected.

The series' move to suburban Chicago changes that atmosphere.

Instead of Irish domestic suspense, the show feels more like an American suburban psychological thriller.

The six of us had mixed feelings about the change.

Some of us thought Chicago worked beautifully for television and made the story feel fresh.

Others missed the atmosphere of the book and felt that the Dublin setting was an important part of what made Mara's story distinctive.

Our consensus?

The relocation works for the adaptation, but we still have a soft spot for Dublin.

👩 Marissa Irvine: Page vs. Screen

Sarah Snook had a huge job stepping into Marissa's shoes.

This is a character who goes from an ordinary mother picking up her child to a woman thrown into an unimaginable nightmare.

The series gives us something the book can't:

a performance we can watch unfold in real time.

We get to see Marissa's fear, desperation, anger, confusion, and determination.

And Snook gives the character plenty of emotional intensity.

As a group, we thought the television version of Marissa worked particularly well because we could physically see how the disappearance changes her.

She's not simply trying to find Milo.

She's trying to make sense of a world that suddenly doesn't make sense anymore.

👩‍🦰 What About Jenny?

Dakota Fanning's Jenny was another major point of discussion for us.

The series gives Jenny and the surrounding relationships more room to develop, which creates additional opportunities to question people's motives.

And this is one place where television has a serious advantage.

On the page, we can analyze dialogue and narration.

On screen?

A character can give someone one weird look and suddenly six book club members are texting each other:

"WHY DID SHE DO THAT?"

😂

The series uses performances, facial expressions, pauses, and body language to create suspicion in ways that feel completely different from the novel.

👶 The Mystery at the Center

Despite all the changes, one thing remains the same:

Where is Milo?

That question drives both versions.

The series preserves the terrifying opening premise and uses Milo's disappearance to expose cracks in relationships that initially appear much more stable than they actually are.

But the television adaptation expands the mystery.

With eight episodes, there's more room to explore the people surrounding Marissa and the secrets that begin coming to light.

The result is less of a direct translation and more of a television interpretation of Andrea Mara's original story.

And honestly?

We think that's important when judging the adaptation.

🧩 The Biggest Difference: How the Mystery Unfolds

This is where our group opinions really started to diverge.

The book moves quickly.

The short chapters and carefully placed revelations kept several of us saying:

"Just one more chapter."

Which, as every book lover knows, is a lie.

It's never just one chapter.

😂

The television series has more breathing room.

Eight episodes mean additional character development, subplots, relationships, and revelations.

Some of us enjoyed that expanded approach.

Others felt the book's tighter pacing created more suspense.

📖 Our Book Club Take:

Book = faster, tighter, more immediately suspenseful

Series = slower, more character-focused, more expansive

Neither approach is necessarily wrong.

They're simply designed for different storytelling formats.

🔍 What We Think the Series Gets Right

✔️ The Premise

The opening kidnapping mystery remains incredibly effective.

A mother arrives to collect her child.

The child isn't there.

The person answering the door doesn't know what she's talking about.

Instant anxiety.

✔️ The Suspicion

Both versions understand that sometimes the most unsettling possibility isn't a complete stranger.

It's someone you thought you knew.

✔️ The Female Characters

We appreciated that the women aren't neatly divided into heroes and villains.

They're complicated.

They're flawed.

They're messy.

They're human.

And, occasionally, they made us want to yell at the television.

✔️ The Performances

Sarah Snook and Dakota Fanning bring something different to characters we already knew from the page.

That made the adaptation interesting even when we knew where certain pieces of the story were headed.

📚 Where We Think the Book Wins

The mystery.

As a group, we felt Andrea Mara's novel had the advantage when it came to suspense and pacing.

The book keeps us moving from one suspicion to another, constantly reassessing what we think we know.

We also preferred the atmosphere of the original Dublin setting.

There is something wonderfully uncomfortable about the book's suburban community and the way everyone's lives seem interconnected.

And then there are those moments when you realize:

Oh. THAT is why that detail mattered.

We love when a thriller makes us rethink something we read 100 pages earlier.

📺 Where We Think the Series Wins

Character performances.

There's something completely different about watching a character's fear or suspicion play out on screen.

The series also has more room to develop its ensemble cast and relationships.

And let's be honest:

Sometimes watching six people try to figure out who is lying is more fun than reading six people trying to figure out who is lying.

Especially when we're watching it together.

😂

🏆 The Page Ladies Verdict

After six readers, two formats, plenty of opinions, and more than a little discussion…

📖 BOOK: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

📺 SERIES: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Our overall winner: THE BOOK. 📚

But and this is a big but we don't think that means the television series isn't worth watching.

Quite the opposite.

We think All Her Fault is an interesting example of how an adaptation can take the core DNA of a novel and reshape it for a completely different medium.

Some changes worked better for us than others.

Some of us preferred the television version of certain characters.

Some preferred the book's pacing.

Some missed Dublin.

Some enjoyed the Chicago setting.

And yes…

We absolutely argued about it.

Which is exactly what a good book club discussion should do.

📖 Should You Read the Book Before Watching?

Our answer: YES.

If you haven't read Andrea Mara's All Her Fault, we'd recommend reading it before watching the Peacock series.

That way, you get the original story, atmosphere, pacing, and character dynamics before seeing how the adaptation reshapes them.

And if you've already watched the series?

Read the book anyway.

Knowing what happens doesn't mean experiencing the story the same way.

The book has enough differences in tone, structure, and character development to make it worthwhile.

❤️ Final Thoughts from The Page Ladies

What we love most about doing a page vs. screen comparison is that there's rarely one definitive answer.

A book and its adaptation don't have to be identical to both be good.

Andrea Mara gave us a tense, twisty domestic thriller that kept us questioning the people surrounding Milo.

Peacock took that premise and created a larger, more visual mystery-thriller designed for an eight-episode television format.

For our six-member book club, the book ultimately won, but the series gave us plenty to talk about and isn't that half the fun?

Because sometimes the best book club conversations aren't the ones where everyone agrees.

They're the ones where someone says:

"Wait… YOU preferred the show?!"

And suddenly we're talking for another hour.

😂📚📺

💬 Now It's Your Turn!

Have you read Andrea Mara's All Her Fault and watched the Peacock series?

Which version did you prefer: the book or the screen adaptation?

And what was the biggest change you noticed between the two?

Tell us what you think! 👇📚📺

📌 Content Note

The Page Ladies Book Club's page vs. screen comparisons reflect the opinions of our six book club members. Individual opinions may differ, and that's part of what makes our book club discussions fun!

This is it, friends! September is the Olympics of the publishing year and this one is extra packed with heavy hitting authors. Let me know in the comments which ones you plan to pick up, or if I missed your most anticipated!

Espiritu by Aiden Thomas (9/1) - The sequel to Cemetery Boys! Ever since being sacrificed as part of a forbidden ritual, Julian has been able to see and communicate with the spirits of passed brujx. But Julian’s also seeing other things: shadows in the corner of his eyes, glowing eyes in the dark, and “dark spots” on people. Then, a strange new brujx shows up. Ángel, as a nonbinary brujx, can heal the living and release the dead, but more than that, they can also see the same dark spots as Julian.

The Disappearers by Marlon James (9/1) - In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay. One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain.

She's A Doll by Barbara Truelove (9/8) - Lucy McQuinn has been murdered, but she’s not about to go quietly. If she doesn’t get to keep breathing, then neither does Kyle, her killer. Possessing the body of an antique doll, she sets out on a quest for revenge. But it’s hard when you’re eighteen inches tall and made of porcelain.

Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang (9/8) - College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her, hoping to connect with the culture she inherited but never fully understood. But a promising start quickly unravels. Then shocking news arrives: Lily’s grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history.

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (9/17) - 2031. America is at war with itself, but for the first time in weeks there is some hope: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone in the city is going to a party. Ari, newly released from prison, arrives with her friend Gloria just as a fragile new era begins. But there are people at the party who shouldn’t be there. Something is very wrong. ICYMI! I reviewed this one in Monday's post.

Anger Is Only A Shadow by Elizabeth Acevedo (9/17) - When her instinct for freedom leads to another stay in D.C. juvenile detention, Lil knows she’s lucky to just be on probation. The only person who might understand is her big brother, Aldwin. Except he’s more distant now than just the hundred miles where he’s away at college. Something’s been off with him for a couple of months, but only Lil seems to realize how important it is to get to him.

Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske (9/15) - At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer’s gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam—a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future. On the first day, the exam group finds a classmate’s dead body in the exam hall.

Buzzard by Inez Ray (9/22) - In 2086, corporations are monitoring fertility. Abortion is illegal. And the last woman alive who can perform the procedure is in hiding. Seven years ago, midwife Mae Bastet was arrested for infanticide in the fractious Arizona Territory for providing health care to women in need. She was torn from her sons and sent to Buzzard - an experimental private prison deep in the Sonoran Desert, run by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan.

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw (9/29) - From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too “of the world” by church folks who grudgingly accepted her into their fold, and too holy by her estranged childhood bestie Petra. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt of: a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant.

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (9/29) - Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures.