How Netflix’s <i>Forever</i> Compares to Judy Blume’s Novel

Spoilers below.

“Back in July of 2020, I pitched Judy [Blume] how I would reimagine this love story,” Mara Brock Akil wrote on Instagram when she announced her new show, Forever, based on Blume’s 1975 novel. The book follows a teenage couple named Katherine and Michael as they explore their sexuality, and themselves, during their senior year of high school. Now, 50 years later, the classic young adult story gets the Akil treatment. Set in 2018, the eight-episode limited series stars Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr. as the story’s protagonists, with Karen Pittman, Wood Harris, Xosha Roquemore, and Niles Fitch rounding out the cast. Blume also serves as an executive producer.

Because the series is a complete reimagining of the book, there are some notable differences between the two. Read on to see how Akil added her own flair to the legendary story.

Atheneum Books for Young Readers Forever . . .

One of the most obvious differences is that the cast for Netflix’s Forever is Black. For the show, the main characters’ names are changed from Katherine Danziger and Michael Wagner to Keisha Clark and Justin Edwards. Their interests are different, too. In the book, Katherine is a tennis player who volunteers at a hospital after school as a “candy striper.” In the show, Keisha is a track star with a photography hobby who dreams of attending Howard University. Keisha is also an only child with a single mom, while Katherine has a sister named Jamie, and her parents are still together.

In the book, we don’t get much insight into Michael’s personal life, but we learn that he loves to ski and plans to become an instructor. He also wants to get accepted into the University of Vermont, where his sister lives. And in the show, Justin is a basketball player whose parents want him to go to Northwestern University, but what he’s really passionate about is making music and becoming a producer.

Blume’s novel is told entirely from Katherine’s point of view. In the show, it alternates between Keisha and Justin’s perspectives, which gives us much more insight into his character.

Michael Cooper Jr. as Justin Edwards and Lovie Simone as Keisha Clark.

Akil said that she wanted this show to be a “love letter to Los Angeles,” so she changed the setting from Blume’s New Jersey to California. This is fitting, as several of Akil’s shows, like Girlfriends and The Game, take place on the West Coast.

In the show, many of the misunderstandings and arguments that Keisha and Justin have take place because of their smartphones and the internet (which didn’t exist when the book was published in the ‘70s). They ghost, block, and mute each other repeatedly throughout their relationship if they get into a fight. The show brilliantly uses social media and technology to show how modern relationship dynamics have evolved over the past five decades. Also, one of the show’s main plot points, a leaked sex tape, doesn’t exist in the book.

Simone opposite Xavier Mills as Christian Boykin.

In the book, Katherine and Michael first meet at a New Year’s Eve party. In the show, they’re childhood friends who reconnect at the party after many years apart, only to discover that they now have feelings for each other.

In the show, Keisha gets accepted into Howard and decides to move to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Justin gets into Northwestern in Chicago, but decides to defer his acceptance because he wants to pursue music instead. He initiates their breakup because life is taking them in two completely different directions, and they eventually agree to go their separate ways.

Meanwhile, in the book, Katherine goes away to a tennis camp and gets involved with a counselor there named Theo, while she’s still in a relationship with Michael, and he breaks up with her once he finds out. Though the journeys in the show and book are different, the destination is the same—both couples call things off in the end and chart their own paths forward, forever changed by their high school love.