Book Club Questions for Reminders of Him

1.Kenna's very first act upon arriving in town is to go to Scotty's grave. What does this choice tell us about her state of mind and her priorities before she has even attempted to see Diem?

2.Ledger narrates his chapters from a close, immediate perspective, while Kenna's letters to Scotty give her chapters an almost confessional quality. How do these two narrative voices feel different from each other, and what does each style reveal about its narrator?

3.Kenna takes a job waitressing at Ledger's bar, not initially knowing who he is to Scotty's family. How does Hoover use this dramatic irony — the reader and eventually Ledger knowing something Kenna does not — to build tension in their early interactions?

1.Ledger knows who Kenna is before she knows who he is. How does this imbalance of information change the dynamic between them when they interact at the bar? When Kenna finally learns his identity, how does that scene land?

2.Kenna is described by townspeople and bar patrons with hostility and suspicion. How does Hoover manage our sympathies so that we see both why the community feels that way and why their judgment is also insufficient or even cruel?

3.Ledger feels a pull toward Kenna that conflicts sharply with his loyalty to the Landrys. How does he rationalize — or fail to rationalize — that conflict in his internal narration?

1.The romantic tension between Kenna and Ledger moves from subtext to something more explicit in this section. At what moment did it feel inevitable to you, and at what moment did it feel like a mistake? Can it be both?

2.Ledger begins secretly helping Kenna in ways the Landrys would not approve of. What does this secret-keeping reveal about the kind of person he is — and what does it foreshadow about the consequences ahead?

3.Grace Landry is one of the novel's most complex supporting characters. Based on what we know of her so far, is her protectiveness of Diem a form of love, a form of grief, or a form of control — or all three?

1.Ledger's relationship with the Landrys is built on love, proximity, and a shared loss. In this section, cracks appear in that relationship. What specific actions or omissions begin to erode their trust in him?

2.Kenna tries several times, in different ways, to prove herself worthy of access to Diem. The Landrys resist each attempt. Is their resistance purely about protecting Diem, or does it also serve another function for them emotionally?

3.Diem is four years old — too young to understand what happened to her father or who her mother is. How does Hoover use Diem's innocence and her questions about the world as a counterweight to the adult grief and anger surrounding her?

1.When the Landrys discover Ledger's connection to Kenna, the fallout is significant. How do they respond, and does their response feel proportionate given what they know and what they fear?

2.Ledger is forced to confront the fact that his feelings for Kenna have put him at odds with people he loves deeply. How does he process that rupture, and does he fully own his role in creating it?

3.In these chapters, we get more of the full story of the night Scotty died. How does that additional context change — or fail to change — the way different characters assign blame?

1.Ledger and Kenna's relationship reaches a crisis point in this section. What specific action or revelation brings them to that point, and how does each of them respond to the rupture?

2.Patrick Landry has been a quieter presence than Grace in earlier chapters. Does this section give him more dimensionality? What does his response to events here tell us about how he processes grief differently from his wife?

3.Kenna's desperation in these chapters sometimes leads her to make choices that seem self-defeating. Do you read those choices as character flaws, or as entirely understandable given her situation? Does the novel seem to judge them?

1.The confrontation or reckoning between Kenna and the Landrys that has been building throughout the novel arrives in this section. How does Hoover stage it — what does she allow to be said, and what remains unspoken?

2.Grace Landry's position on Kenna has been the most immovable in the novel. Does anything in these chapters move it, even slightly? If so, what specifically shifts her, and does it feel earned?

3.Ledger has been caught between two loyalties for most of the book. By this point, has he truly chosen, or is he still trying to hold both? What does his position here cost him?

1.The novel's ending brings Kenna and Diem together in a meaningful way. How does Hoover handle that reunion — does it feel triumphant, bittersweet, or something more complicated? What emotional note does the novel close on?

2.Ledger and Kenna's romantic resolution arrives alongside the resolution of Kenna's relationship with the Landrys. Do you find it satisfying that both storylines resolve roughly together, or does one feel like it overshadows or rushes the other?

3.The final letter or letters Kenna writes to Scotty carry the emotional weight of everything she has been through since her return to town. What does she say — or what does she leave unsaid — and how does that closing letter function as a farewell to the epistolary device itself?

1.Which character stayed with you most after you finished the book — not necessarily the one you liked most, but the one who occupied the most space in your thinking? What is it about them that lodged there?

2.Hoover uses the letters to Scotty as a recurring structural device throughout the novel. Looking back at the full arc of those letters — from early apology to eventual farewell — how do they map the stages of Kenna's grief and healing?

3.The novel is structured with alternating points of view between Kenna and Ledger. Did you find yourself more inside one perspective than the other? How might the story have felt different told entirely from one point of view?