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Fully-Booked: Literary Podcast episodes
- Verity Movie Review: Book vs Movie Differences + Ending (Spoilers)
Our Verity movie review is here, and yes, everybody in that house is a villain. Full spoilers for the Colleen Hoover book and film.
Meaghan and Shirin caught Verity in an empty theater (lucky, because Shirin muttered about Colleen Hoover's characters roughly seven times). Anne Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, and Josh Hartnett plays Jeremy Crawford. Consider this Verity movie review a full Verity book vs. movie breakdown too: the manuscript, the canoe, the twin the movie quietly cut, and why Lowen trades the book's sleepwalking for Scotch and her late mom's Xanax.
Verity Movie Review: Cast and Performances- Anne Hathaway plays Verity Crawford and owns the film's best moment: the sit-up jump scare got both of us in the theater.
- Josh Hartnett walks the line as Jeremy Crawford, grieving husband or something worse (his Netflix creature series Below dropped October 8, too).
- Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh did not land for Meaghan; Shirin kept getting Fifty Shades of Grey flashbacks.
- Costumes and the very strange boulder-filled Vermont house were highlights for both of us.
- The novel gives the Crawfords three kids (twins Harper and Chastin, plus Crew); the movie cuts Chastin and makes Harper and Crew twins.
- Book Lowen sleepwalks; movie Lowen self-medicates with Scotch and her late mom's Xanax.
- The book keeps Verity's death inside the house; the movie puts her in the lake, which raises a few autopsy questions.
- Lowen finds Verity's letter to Jeremy under Crew's floorboard, claiming the manuscript was fiction and Jeremy caused her accident.
- Both versions keep the ambiguity. Meaghan's verdict: everybody is the bad one.
- An alternate ending reportedly made Lowen the clear villain and didn't survive test audiences.
- Plot holes we couldn't shake: the lake, and a nine-year-old keeping that secret.
- Verity has always been Shirin's favorite Colleen Hoover book, and the least bananas, since it's a thriller and you walk in expecting chaos.
- From Verity to All Your Perfects, Hoover's range is wild.
- Screenwriter Nick Antosca (Cape Fear on Apple TV, The Act) brings real thriller credentials.
- Shirin finished Remain by Nicholas Sparks ahead of M. Night Shyamalan's film with Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor.
- Meaghan followed Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke with Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, a wish-in-the-well pregnancy horror novel.
- Every trailer before Verity was an adaptation: Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro), Sense and Sensibility, Remain and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
- Sunrise on the Reaping is definitely on our list. Klara and the Sun might be too.
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51 min - The Love Hypothesis Movie Review: Book vs Prime Video Adaptation
The Love Hypothesis movie review time, and honestly? Prime Video made a fake-dating rom-com that had us grinning the whole way through. Meaghan and Shirin dig into the adaptation of Ali Hazelwood's 2021 bestseller, a book that started life in 2018 as Star Wars fan fiction (yes, Reylo) before a literary agent came calling.
Directed by Claire Scanlon, The Love Hypothesis stars Lili Reinhart as Olive Smith, a Stanford PhD student who kisses the first guy she sees to sell a lie to her best friend Anh. That guy turns out to be Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), the most feared professor in the department. A fake relationship follows, and so does a truly regrettable amount of sunscreen. The casting twist is real, too: Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley. Somebody knew what they were doing.
From Reylo Fan Fiction to Bestseller: Ali Hazelwood's Origin Story- The Love Hypothesis began in 2018 as Star Wars fan fiction about Rey and Kylo Ren, then became Ali Hazelwood's debut novel in 2021
- Shirin's love-hate relationship with Hazelwood: this one is still her favorite, and the later books haven't hit the same
- Quick takes on Love, Theoretically, Bride, and Deep End
- Rights picked up in 2022, Claire Scanlon directing, and Ali Hazelwood on board as a producer
- The book trope Meaghan is very glad got cut
- The meet-cute kiss plays as properly uncomfortable on screen, and the movie calls it out
- Adam's history with Olive (the expired contact lenses) shows up much later in the film
- Lili Reinhart's Olive reads like a real person, not a manic pixie dream girl
- Tom Bateman nails awkward, intense, and uncomfortable (see: the sunscreen scene)
- Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, and Arty Froushan round out a cast with real chemistry
- The Star Wars full circle: Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley
- Olive's pancreatic cancer research and her ride-or-die friendship with Anh
- Dr. Evil, the dog photos, and the Mountain Dew control sample
- The Tom Benton twist and why the public confrontation didn't sit right with either of us
- Concordia University and John Abbott College stand in for Stanford
- Another Montreal shoot we spotted: 56 Days with Dove Cameron
- Below on Netflix: sea creature horror in Newfoundland with Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton
- Yaga: Baba Yaga folklore meets murder mystery with Hudson Williams, Noah Reid, and Carrie-Anne Moss
- Up next: Verity, the second Colleen Hoover adaptation of 2026
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37 min - Practical Magic 2 Review: Cozy Sequel or Nostalgia Trap?
Our Practical Magic 2 review is here, and yes, the Owens curse is back (poor Gary). Meaghan and Shirin went in braced for a nostalgia cash-in and came out pleasantly surprised.
Practical Magic 2 adapts Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic, the direct sequel to Practical Magic, with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as Sally and Gillian Owens and Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing returning as Aunt Jet and Aunt Franny. This time the story leaves the Massachusetts house behind. Kylie (Joey King) falls hard for Gideon, the death beetle starts chirping, and the whole family ends up in the English village of Thornfield chasing the roots of the curse, with Lee Pace along for the ride as Ian.
Practical Magic 2 and Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic- Practical Magic 2 adapts The Book of Magic, Alice Hoffman's direct sequel to Practical Magic, after the prequel Magic Lessons: The Book of Magic
- Why this sequel feels book-based: a real beginning, middle, and end instead of a nostalgia patchwork
- Meaghan's yearly fall rewatch of Practical Magic (1998) and Shirin's Sabrina the Teenage Witch era
- Gary is gone, and Sally's forgetting spell keeps Kylie and Antonia in the dark about their magic
- The death beetle chirps for Aunt Jet, who leaves behind the Book of Raven and a way to break the curse
- Gideon's coma sends Kylie, Sally, and Gillian to Thornfield, England, where the villain twist lands
- Aunt Franny's sacrifice and how Practical Magic 2 finally breaks the Owens curse
- Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing reunite, and the chemistry holds
- Lee Pace as Ian, from Twilight to Bodies Bodies Bodies
- Joey King and Maisie Williams as Kylie and Antonia, and why their bond barely registers
- The online discourse around expressive performances in Practical Magic 2
- Olivia Wilde's comments on casting actors whose faces still move
- Why Dianne Wiest's performance stands out
- Worked: the aesthetic, Sally's costumes, the aunts, and a bigger world beyond the Owens house
- Didn't: forced awkward humor, a thin sister relationship, and not nearly enough midnight margaritas
- Split critic and audience scores, and whether a third film happens with no book left to adapt
- Our interview with Judy Molland on The Making of a Witch
- Fall and winter adaptations on our radar: Verity, Sunrise on the Reaping, Klara and the Sun, and Remain.
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39 min - Judy Molland on The Making of a Witch and Finding Her Name in a Witch Trial
The Making of a Witch began when Judy Molland found her own last name in a book about English witch trials.
Meaghan is flying solo this week (Shirin is out sick) with a pre-recorded interview she has been sitting on since the spring. Judy Molland is a first-time novelist, a former French and English teacher, and a practising Wiccan who spent years chasing a woman almost nobody bothered to write down.
The Making of a Witch, out now from She Writes Press, tells the story of Alice Molland, the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England, at Exeter in 1685.
Alice Molland: the last witch sentenced to death in England- Judy Molland was 25, at her father's vicarage, when she opened Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic and found her own surname in it Religion and the Decline of Magic
- The line named Alice Molland as the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England, in 1685
- Her father, a Church of England vicar, shut the book and told her never to mention that woman again. That shut the whole thing down for years
- Molland is an unusual name in Devon, which is a large part of why Judy came to think of Alice as her ancestor
- The only record Judy found was a 17th century Assizes entry naming Alice as tried for witchcraft on the bodies of three women
- The page was part Latin, in a hand she could not read. The librarian pointed at the line and did nothing else
- Marks on the record indicated Alice was poor, propertyless and alone. That is the whole evidence base
- Having almost nothing turned out to be freeing, because it meant fiction was the only honest way in The Making of a Witch
- Twenty years ago Judy started having the same dream: a horse chestnut wood, a cottage, a dark-haired woman with blue eyes beckoning her down the path. She knew it was Alice
- Alice learns healing from Goody Luscombe, executed in the opening chapter while Alice, aged ten, is made to watch
- Alice works with mugwort, slippery elm and comfrey, and her reputation as a healer is exactly what puts her in danger
- Helping people is what Alice is for, and it is what will get her killed
- Judy read Exeter court records across two summers. A woman charged with killing a neighbour's pigs by looking at them. A starving widow refused food, then blamed when that household fell ill
- A red bird on a windowsill. A woman seen with a toad. Enough to put someone in front of a court
- Being tried was often the end of a life even without a hanging, because the label followed you
- The Pendle witches in Lancashire and the East Anglia trials are the best known English cases
- Judy went to a Pagan Federation conference in London not long after her father's funeral and described it as coming home
- She became the overseas member of a coven in Devon and helped put up the first English memorial to accused witches, outside Exeter Castle, in the 1990s Exeter Castle witches plaque
- The moon rituals in the novel arrived because they arrived in her own life first. None of it was planned
- Every witch hunt history she read was written by the rulers, never the accused. That was the driving idea
- Next is a sequel following Alice's son Tommy, grown up. Judy calls it a novel of revenge.
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52 min - The Whisper Man Book vs Movie: What Netflix Cut From Alex North's Thriller
The Whisper Man book vs movie, and the gap between them is wider than it looks. Meaghan and Shirin dig into Netflix's adaptation of Alex North's 2019 thriller, out August 28, and work out what got lost on the way to the screen.
Alex North (the pen name of Leeds crime writer Steve Mosby) wrote a slow, atmospheric novel about a widowed writer, a copycat killer, and a father and son who barely speak. James Ashcroft's film keeps the bones and trims almost everything else. Meaghan came in having listened to the audiobook narrated by Christopher Eccleston, Shirin went in completely blind, and they landed in roughly the same place: the cast is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a script that does not give them much.The Whisper Man Book vs Movie
- Netflix released The Whisper Man on August 28, adapted from Alex North's 2019 debut thriller and directed by James Ashcroft for the Russo brothers' AGBO. Meaghan had just finished the audiobook. Shirin had read nothing. Both of them wanted more.
- The story moves from England to America, which changes the setting, the town, and the way the characters talk to each other.
- Meaghan listened to the audiobook narrated by Christopher Eccleston and recommends it, accent and all.
- The reveal that Pete Willis is Tom Kennedy's father arrives immediately on screen. In the novel, you do not get it until roughly halfway.
What the Adaptation Cut
- The film keeps the plot and drops the reasons, and that is where most of the frustration sits.
- Francis Carter Jr's motive is fully drawn in the novel: forced as a child to witness his father's crimes, convinced he is rescuing neglected boys, killing them the moment they disappoint him.
- The book gives you his POV, which makes the guilt and the enjoyment sit uncomfortably together. None of that is on screen.
- The ending changes for Pete and for the resolution with Tom. The novel handles it as something closer to a dream, which is far more effective.
- Shirin's biggest complaint: everything gets spoon-fed. The girl in the blue sweater would have hit harder if left unexplained.
Cast Notes and Performances
- The cast is stacked to the point of distraction, and mostly they are doing more than the script asks.
- Adam Scott as Tom Kennedy is the standout. He also played a grieving writer in Hokum, Damian McCarthy's film from May, which makes two this year.
- Robert De Niro as Pete Willis is underused, largely scowling. In the novel, Pete is younger and still an active detective, so he actually participates.
- Michael Keaton as Frank Carter is very good and turns up unannounced if you skipped the trailer.
- Michelle Monaghan's Amanda Beck deserved far more screen time. She also recurs in The Shadows. Owen Teague as Francis Carter Jr barely gets any.
On the Nightstand
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, a dark satire about a trad wife influencer who wakes up in the nineteenth century. Anne Hathaway is set to star and produce for Amazon MGM.
- Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, on the pile next, part of a real wave of trad wife horror and satire.
- Let's Kiss and Tell by Joss Richard, a fake dating romance between a sex columnist and a news writer. Easy summer closer.
Coming Up on Fully-Booked Podcast
An interview with Judy Molland about The Making of a Witch, her historical novel about Alice Molland, her likely ancestor and the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England.- Practical Magic 2, The Love Hypothesis on Prime Video, and Verity in October, which the trailers are very much selling as horror.
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51 min - My Life with the Walter Boys Season 3 Review + Cole's Crash ExplainedSeason 3 Is the First One That Lost Us
- Shirin rewatched seasons one and two to prep for this and went in genuinely excited. Season 3 did not hold up.
- Ten episodes is too many. An eight episode season would have carried this story without the padding.
- The problem is not the cast. It is the writing, which shoehorns in conflict to manufacture drama instead of letting it build.
- Seasons one and two flowed. This one felt choppy and forced.
The Cole and Jackie Breakup Nobody Wanted- Two seasons of will they, won't they, and the payoff is a clunky breakup built on Cole deciding he is not good enough for Jackie.
- Cole pulls a full Edward Cullen (leaving Bella in the woods to die energy) and we have collectively moved on from that.
- Uncle Richard loses it over one party and one slipping grade, which does not track for a character who has been chill for two seasons.
- Nobody in Silver Falls celebrated Cole's turnaround, and that is the strangest part of the whole season.
Cole Walter Deserved Better This Season- Cole is getting into college, working at the garage, staying out of trouble, and everyone still treats him like the problem.
- The drag racing arc gets a shrug from Katherine while Alex's rodeo got a full conniption last season. We wanted more digging on that inconsistency.
- His arc from season one to now is the best on the show, and this season barely acknowledges it.
Dylan Newsome Is the MVP- A goofy doofus who steps up for Kiley and for Cole, over and over.
- The scene where he asks Eliot to back off without getting aggressive, then just closes the door, is the best character beat of the season.
- Alex realising he wants Kiley only after she is happy with someone great is frustrating and very tropey.
The Adult Storylines Are Still the Best Part- Katherine and George Walter working through his stroke recovery, the ranch, and their marriage is the material that actually lands.
- Hannah Walter comes back for Isaac and Lee and the show gives her grace instead of a villain edit.
- Grace Wagner is the most believable teenage girl on this show. Danny and Erin solve problems by talking. More of that, please.
What We Do Not Want in Season 4- Season 4 is confirmed for 2027 and already filming in Calgary.
- Cole is not dead. Let us all be honest about that.
- No Alex and Jackie. Do not do it.
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41 min - Cape Fear Ending Explained: The Boat, the Twist, the Sequel Bait
Cape Fear has finished its ten-episode run on Apple TV, and this is the full review: the finale, the cast, and the two episodes nobody needed.
Meaghan is joined by Arthur for a wrap-up of Nick Antosca's Cape Fear adaptation now that all ten episodes are out. The Apple TV limited series is built on The Executioners, the 1957 John D. MacDonald novel that already produced the 1962 film and Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake, so this is the third pass at the same story. Scorsese and Steven Spielberg executive produce.
The cast is stacked, the score is excellent, and the runtime is not tight. Full spoilers for the entire series, including the finale.
The Cape Fear Adaptation Problem: Ten Episodes, Eight Episodes' Worth of Story
- Cape Fear is the third adaptation of John D. MacDonald's 1957 novel The Executioners, after the 1962 film and Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake.
- Both hosts land in the same place: eight episodes would have been the right shape. At least two mid-season hours drag on good performances alone.
- The side plots multiply because the runtime demands it. Nevaeh's arc ends when she leaves juvie and simply stops.
- Zack's mental health storyline is the one that stings. It gets worse across the season, never resolves, and reads as cruel rather than honest.
Javier Bardem's Max Cady and the Rooftop Tone Break
- The early ambiguity is the show's sharpest move. For a few episodes, you genuinely are not sure Max is behind any of it, and Bardem plays both registers well.
- The hurricane rooftop scene lands like a comic book. Lightning, close-up, a jump through the window, and a room full of laughter that the show almost certainly did not want.
- Max's late-season hallucinations tie back to his brain injury, but they do not push the story anywhere.
- The police work is comically bad, repeatedly, and the show has time to spare for it.
The Crystal Cady Twist and the Finale on the Boat
- Juliette Lewis plays Crystal Cady, a new character with no equivalent in the films, thirty-five years after her Oscar-nominated turn as Danielle in the 1991 version.
- The houseboat sequence spanning episodes nine and ten is the best stretch of acting in the series. Ron Perlman, Lewis, and Bardem all firing.
- Lewis and Amy Adams sharing scenes late in the season is a highlight, and Lewis gets genuine laughs before the reveal reframes her entirely.
- The finale sets Anna up to expose Max publicly, which is the most satisfying beat the show offers.
Performances Worth Naming
- Amy Adams carries the series because Max cannot be the centre. She is also completely believable as a lawyer, which is rarer than it should be.
- Lily Collias as Natalie is excellent in the back half, especially the vacillation in her scenes with Max.
- Joe Anders as Zack is not likeable, and that is the point. Very believable.
- Jamie Hector as investigator Ray Rawlins is the voice of reason, so of course he dies. Anna Baryshnikov plays Tabitha, and yes, she is Mikhail Baryshnikov's daughter.
Score, Setting and the Sequel Bait Question
- Jeff Russo's score is a real strength, reworking Bernard Herrmann's original theme into something that still hits.
- The Savannah setting is sticky and hot, and you feel it. Lots of Scorsese red.
- The final over-the-shoulder scene reads as sequel bait for a show billed as a limited series. Nobody here wants a season two.
- Also discussed: the Wicker trailer, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and Silo season three.
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25 min - The Odyssey (2026): Nolan's Three-Hour Homecoming, Reviewed
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is finally here, and we gave all three hours a proper sit-down. This is our full spoiler review of the 2026 movie: what Nolan kept from Homer, what he changed, and why a 3,000-year-old poem feels this pointed right now.
Matt Damon plays an Odysseus who is very much not the perfect hero (he fires the extra arrow, and even his men know better). Tom Holland is Telemachus, Anne Hathaway is Penelope stuck ruling Ithaca while the suitors circle, and Robert Pattinson is so hateable as Antinous you will want to reach through the screen. We get into Zendaya's Athena, Samantha Morton's Circe (the body-horror magic scene that had non-horror people squirming in their seats), Charlize Theron's Calypso, and Elliot Page as Sinon, a character who isn't even in the original poem.
Nolan's Odyssey vs. Homer: What Stayed, What Changed
- The film tracks the epic's major beats closely (post-Trojan War, Poseidon's wrath, the long road to Ithaca) while braiding present-day Ithaca with flashback.
- Elliot Page's Sinon isn't in the Odyssey at all; he surfaces in other tellings, and here he works as a mentor-figure insert that deepens Antinous.
- Penelope gets a more modern, furious framing, even if the ending pulls her back toward the original.
The Set Pieces: Cyclops, Circe, and the Underworld
- The Cyclops (Polyphemus) was a real ten-piece puppet, filmed in an actual cave. Horror people and non-horror people left equally rattled.
- Samantha Morton's Circe plays visceral and grotesque, closer to the old myth than any wand-waving magic.
- The underworld was shot in Iceland under all-day daylight, which gave it that eerie glow with no lighting rig needed.
The Ensemble and the Cameo Hunt
- Matt Damon (Odysseus, real beard included), Tom Holland (Telemachus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Robert Pattinson (a gloriously hateable Antinous).
- Deep bench: Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Lupita Nyong'o in a dual role as Helen and Clytemnestra, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Ryan Hurst as Mentor.
- Blink-and-miss-it faces: Jovan Adepo, Corey Hawkins, Logan Marshall-Green. The recognize-that-actor game is a feature and, for some of us, a distraction.
Zeus' Law and the 2026 Read
- The film leans on xenia (Zeus' law of hospitality) and ties Odysseus' suffering to breaking it first, with the Trojan horse.
- Agamemnon's war for trade routes and power (not honor) reads straight into now. History repeats.
- The "people from the sea" reveal reframes the whole journey as a reckoning, not just a string of monsters.
Production Worth the Oscars Talk
- IMAX cameras run three minutes and roar. The crew built silencing boxes and mirror rigs so actors could act. Tom Holland thought he was getting cut for being bad.
- Costume designers degraded fabric with real salt and sun to age it accurately.
- The cast learned real rowing and boating (not the movie kind). Everyone came back wet, miserable, and in the best shape of their lives.
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51 min - Greek Mythology Retellings: Why The Odyssey Never Dies
Greek mythology retellings keep multiplying, and nobody can quite explain why. Christopher Nolan just dropped a $250 million adaptation of The Odyssey, a poem roughly 2,700 years old, and Meaghan and Shirin wanted to figure out what keeps pulling all of us (and Hollywood) back to these stories.
This one stays high-level, and neither of us was a classics major, so we'll own that upfront. We walk through what The Odyssey actually is, why Odysseus is a much grayer hero than people remember, and why feminist retellings like Madeline Miller's Circe keep landing so hard. Then we get into Nolan's stacked cast: Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous, and Lupita Nyong'o doing double duty as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026): The Cast, Explained
• Nolan's $250 million IMAX adaptation of The Odyssey hit theaters on July 17, 2026, his first film since Oppenheimer.
• Confirmed casting: Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous.
• Lupita Nyong'o pulls double duty as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. Charlize Theron plays Calypso (some listings say Circe, so we're flagging it).
The Odyssey, For People Who Skipped Classics
• The short version: Odysseus spends ten years getting home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, mostly because he pissed off Poseidon.
• Penelope holds down the kingdom and fends off suitors while raising their son, Telemachus, not knowing if her husband is alive.
• Gods, monsters, a cyclops, the enchantress Circe, the sirens. Odysseus survives on cunning over brute strength, then loses his whole crew anyway.
Why Greek Mythology Retellings Keep Winning
• Older texts sort people into good and bad. Modern retellings hand the mic to the ones shoved to the margins.
• Feminist retellings are the clearest example, like Madeline Miller's Circe, centering a character the original treats as a footnote.
• Odysseus himself was never a clean hero, and that gray area is a big reason the story keeps holding up.
Odyssey Adaptations Hiding in Plain Sight
• You've seen more of them than you think: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier, 1997), and [LINK: Ulysses] by James Joyce.
• It reaches into sci-fi too, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the creatures and detours borrowed by Percy Jackson (Rick Riordan).
On Our Nightstand: New Releases and ARCs
• Shirin is deep in Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, now getting a Peacock series from Seth MacFarlane (Princess Donut on screen, finally).
• Meaghan is reading an ARC of The Iron Hex, the debut romantasy from Canadian author Victoria S. Walsh, out August 4, 2026.
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38 min - Enola Holmes 3 Review: Millie Bobby Brown Deserved a Better Script
Enola Holmes 3 dropped on Netflix on July 1, 2026, and it is the first film in the franchise that neither of us actually enjoyed. Director Philip Barantini reportedly pitched it as the Prisoner of Azkaban of the series, the entry where the tone grows up alongside the characters. Enola is getting married. Sherlock has been kidnapped. There is stolen Afghan gold buried inside a story about British rule in Malta. On paper, this should be the best Enola Holmes movie. On screen, she winks at the camera while she is being drowned.
Enola Holmes 3 Review: The Netflix Threequel Nobody Was Ready to Dislike- Enola Holmes 3 arrived on Netflix on July 1, 2026, four years after Enola Holmes 2, and it is the first film in the series we both came away cold on.
- Director Philip Barantini took over from Harry Bradbeer and pitched a darker entry, the Prisoner of Azkaban of the franchise. The wink Enola delivers mid-drowning suggests otherwise.
- Everyone except Sharon Duncan-Brewster seems to be floating through the film. Her Moriarty reads as over the top only because nobody else is playing at her level.
- The set, the costumes, and Malta itself are lovely. The film uses its locations far better than it uses its plot.
Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes Books vs. Netflix's Original Scripts- The Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer runs ten books, starting with The Case of the Missing Marquess.
- Only the first film adapts a book. Films two and three are original scripts built on Springer's characters, with the author uninvolved.
- Springer's Enola is fourteen, a "perditorian" (finder of lost things), and a genuinely clever spin on Arthur Conan Doyle's canon.
Colonialism, Stolen Gold, and Commentary That Never Lands- The mystery turns on British officers stealing Afghan gold and hiding it in Malta, tied to Tewkesbury's late father and the Empire's occupation of the island.
- Moriarty raises real, sharp points about who Britain took from and why. The film states them, then moves on to the next scene.
- Compare Enola Holmes 2, where the match girls' strike of 1888 was woven straight into the mystery. Here the wedding plot and the mystery plot barely touch.
Female Empowerment With No Actual Power- Enola is asked to choose between being a lady and being a detective, which is the most interesting question in the film and gets the least room.
- Eudoria Holmes has nothing to do and remains a fugitive. Her companion Edith is right there, and the film will not go anywhere near it.
- Sherlock and Watson get the same treatment. The tea, the closeness, the careful framing, and then nothing. Commit or don't.
The Verdict, the Scores, and Enola Holmes 4- Strengths: costumes, sets, Malta, and the comfort of recurring characters. Weaknesses: tone, plot holes, and a mystery you forget while watching it.
- Audiences and critics both landed lower than either previous film, the franchise's first entry to miss Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Netflix has not confirmed a fourth film. Millie Bobby Brown says she is in if Netflix and Louis Partridge are in.
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36 min
About Fully-Booked: Literary Podcast
From the publisher's feed
A Podcast for Casual Bookworms Everywhere. Every week, join co hosts Meaghan & Shirin as they share their thoughts & opinions about books and their adaptations-the good, the bad & the…
crappy of it all. Do they have any expertise? No. Are they going to tackle all that the literary world has to offer anyway? You bet. New episodes drop every Friday.