The Map That Leads to You brings viewers wanderlust, heartbreak and all of the life that happens in between.
Prime Video’s newest vacation romance is based on the late J.P. Monninger’s 2017 novel by the same name. The book follows Heather as she and her two college best friends, Constance and Amy, enjoy a trip around Europe following graduation before they start the next phase of their life.
On an overnight train, Heather meets Jack, her polar opposite: she prefers a plan and has a cushy finance job waiting for her in New York City, while Jack maintains a go-with-the-flow attitude on his travels, using his grandfather’s journal as a guide.
Their whirlwind romance takes them across Europe, through the highs and lows of their time together, including the sweet, tender moments and arguments about their clashing philosophies on life. All the while, Jack has a secret that will turn both of their worlds upside down.
The movie adaptation, which premiered Aug. 20 on Prime Video, stars Madelyn Cline as Heather, KJ Apa as Jack, Sofia Wylie as Connie (Constance in the book), Madison Thompson as Amy and Orlando Norman as Jack’s friend, Raef. In order to bring the story to the screen, the filmmaking team made some big adjustments to the characters and plot.
Here are all the differences between The Map That Leads to You novel and the Prime Video film.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Map That Leads to You!
In the movie, Heather’s mom is out of the picture
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In the movie, Heather is raised by a single father, portrayed by Josh Lucas. In one scene, she explains to Jack that her mom was an architect, though she wasn’t sure if that was still her job because she left her family when Heather was 10.
Her mom got a job in a new city and made periodic visits, phone calls and wrote letters until the communication ultimately stopped.
However, in the book, Heather’s parents are still together. She frequently receives phone calls from both of her parents throughout the book, including her mother, who is occasionally referred to as her “Mom-a-saurus.”
In the book, Heather and her friends graduate from Amherst College
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It’s a small change, but in the film, Heather and her friends Amy and Connie graduated from college in Boston before embarking on their European adventure.
However, the book starts with the friends’ graduation from Amherst College, located in Amherst, Mass., approximately two hours away from Boston.
In the movie, Heather is from Texas
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Heather specifies that her family is from Texas in the movie. Toward the end of the film, she returns back home months after Jack’s mysterious disappearance to spend the holidays with her dad and family.
In the book, Heather is from New Jersey, where her parents still reside, just a train ride from her new home in N.Y.C.
In the book, Heather and Jack meet on a train to Amsterdam
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Jack and Heather’s meet-cute on the train is similar in the movie and the book, but takes place in different locations.
In the movie, they meet on an overnight train from Paris to Barcelona when Jack asks Heather to hold his backpack before hoisting himself up onto the luggage rack above her seat to rest. During their conversation, they talk about life and books, including Heather’s love for Ernest Hemingway.
In the book, they are on an overnight train to Amsterdam, which shifts the events of their travels and what the new group of friends get up to on the tail-end of their European adventure.
In the movie, Jack is from New Zealand
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In the movie, Jack is from New Zealand, where Apa hails from. Toward the beginning of the film, when Heather and Jack are outside the club, he tells her that he’s from New Zealand and has been traveling and going with the flow. Later, when Heather is talking to her dad on the phone in Rome, she confesses that she met someone during her travels, a guy named Jack from New Zealand who is following his great-grandfather’s journal.
At one point, when Heather asks about whether or not he works to afford travel, Jack says he tries not to work and does odd jobs, including scrubbing the deck on boats, working at a supermarket, cleaning cars and assisting a medium. He later tells Heather that he was just like her, double-majoring in economics and statistics, and at one point, had a job like hers.
However, in the book, Jack is American. He grew up in Vermont, where his grandfather had a farm, and was raised by his parents, with whom he has a strained relationship. He graduated from the University of Vermont with a communications degree and pursued journalism when he got out of college, working as a reporter for a small newspaper in Wyoming.
In the book, Jack is following his grandfather’s journal
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In a small detail change in the movie, Jack is following his great-grandfather Russell’s journal written post-WWII. The handwritten and illustrated journal contains pages upon pages about his travels, including passages about special locations that Jack later travels to by himself, as well as adventures he replicates with Heather and her friends.
In the book, Jack is following his grandfather Vernon’s journal, though it was still written post-WWII.
In the movie, Amy clearly gets robbed of her belongings
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In a turning point for Heather, Connie and Amy’s trip across Europe, Amy gets robbed of all of her belongings after a night out. On the train to Barcelona, she meets a guy named Victor on the train and the two hook up. He invites Amy and her friends to a club at a warehouse in Barcelona and Jack arrives with his friend, Raef, who is interested in Connie.
Amy goes to a house party with Victor and the next morning, it’s revealed that he stole all of her belongings. Heather, Connie and Amy along with Jack and Raef go on a hunt for the house party and eventually find Victor at a hostel. They break into the room and recover all of her belongings, as well as around €5,000 cash, which they use to extend their trip around Spain.
In the book, Amy loses her belongings after a night out, but doesn’t initially remember all of the details or tell her friends. She cuts her trip short and returns back to the United States while Heather and Connie continue their trip around Europe.
Later in the book, while on a girls’ trip, Amy tells Heather and Connie the truth: that she thinks she was drugged by a man named Alfred and woke up on a boat with all of her belongings gone.
In the book, Jack doesn’t reveal that he had a health scare
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In the movie, Jack tells Heather candidly that he had a health scare previously, which is what inspired his travels.
In the book, even though Jack is at times tired or ill, he doesn’t tell Heather that he had a scare. However, during a conversation with her, he tells a story about his old co-worker Tom from the newspaper who wanted the same thing as Jack — to be a journalist.
Then he discovered a lump above his collarbone, was diagnosed with cancer and died nine months later. This affected Jack deeply and made him question his mortality. Raef later reveals to Heather that “Tom” wasn’t a real person. Jack was referring to himself and would call his condition “Old Tom.”
In the movie, Heather extends her trip to spend more time with Jack while Amy and Connie go on their own travels
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After Heather, Connie and Amy extend their trip through Spain with Jack and Raef, the friend group all go their separate ways. Amy goes to hike the Camino de Santiago in Spain and Connie and Raef go on a trip to learn how to make wine.
While Heather is set to go back home to start her new job, Jack convinces her to cut into her buffer time before she moves into her apartment and extend her trip to continue their travels, bringing them to Rome.
In the book, Amy makes the decision to go home after all of her belongings go missing in Amsterdam. Connie and Heather go to Berlin together, where Jack surprises Heather after an argument. Instead of the group of five traveling together through Spain, Heather and Connie enjoy several days in Berlin and Raef asks Connie to go to a jazz festival in Málaga, Spain.
Heather and Jack’s travels are then extended across the wider breadth of Europe.
In the book, Heather and Jack travel to more countries
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After the group splits up following their joyride through Spain on Victor’s dime, Jack and Heather extend their time in Europe, traveling through Spain, Portugal and Italy. In Spain, they go to Donostia-San Sebastian and attend Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona for the “running of the bulls” where he injures his shoulder and has to go to the hospital.
They travel to Porto, Portugal, next before they end their trip in Rome, where they plant an olive tree in a grove together after he reveals that he will be going back to N.Y.C. with her.
In the book, Jack and Heather’s travels extend even further. After Berlin, they travel to Poland, Prague, Switzerland and Italy. Their travels end in Paris, where they meet back up with Connie and Raef.
One day, Jack and Raef disappear for the day while Heather and Connie enjoy their time together. At one point during the trip, rather than planting an olive tree in Italy, they plant a European ash tree in the Jardin du Luxembourg after dark with locks of their hair.
Unfortunately, in both the book and movie, Heather and Jack’s trips end in the same way — Jack agrees to go to N.Y.C. with Heather and ultimately ditches her at the airport, leaving her to travel back alone while he ghosts her.
In the movie, Heather receives a letter from Jack at Connie and Raef’s wedding
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After Jack leaves Heather at the airport and doesn’t go back to N.Y.C. with her, Heather starts her new life and job in the city. As she does in both the book and movie, Connie gets engaged to Raef with their wedding set for the following spring — in Barcelona (in the book, it’s in Paris).
In the movie, during the wedding, Heather asks Raef if he has heard anything from Jack. He takes her to a room and lets her know that Jack never RSVPd, but sent a gift and a letter for her, which was only to be given to her if she asked about him.
In the letter, Jack says vanishing at the airport was “unforgivable” and watching her board the plane by herself was “the hardest thing.” He said he felt that he had no choice and that he lied to her about how sick he was and that he was afraid his cancer would come back. He said that he couldn’t ask her to watch him die, so he had to leave, and hoped she would find happiness.
In the book, it’s Raef who tells Heather that Jack is sick. When they are sharing a dance at the wedding, Raef confesses that he kept a secret from Heather and Connie — in Paris, when he and Jack disappeared for the day, they were at the hospital.
Jack was sick before he traveled to Europe, and his symptoms reappeared. Heather then leaves the wedding to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg to dig up the tree they planted together. When she digs it up, she discovers a letter buried with the tree written from Jack to her that shared that he was sick and dying.
In the book, Heather finds Jack at a festival in Bulgaria
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In the movie, after discovering that Jack is sick, Heather leaves Connie and Raef’s wedding in Barcelona to go to Santa Pau where Jack’s grandfather wrote about a spring festival. It was described in a ripped out page of his journal that they discovered together.
Heather arrives at the festival and is enveloped in the group of people dancing. In the crowd, she finds Jack and the two embrace. He tells Heather that he can’t give her a future, but she says that she doesn’t need him to. They confess their love for each other again and begin to kiss amid the celebration.
In the book, Heather has Jack’s grandfather’s journal, not just the singular page, and remembers the first entry in the journal is from the Surva Festival in Batak, Bulgaria. She travels to Bulgaria for the festival in hopes of finding Jack, but doesn’t initially find him during the celebrations — she thought she saw him with a woman, but he disappeared into the crowd.
While eating at a restaurant, Jack walks by the window, and she runs after him. Their eyes finally meet amid the crowd of people, and they embrace and share a kiss.
Jack tells Heather that his leukemia came back, and he found out the results while in Paris. Much like the movie, in the book, Heather and Jack enjoy their time at the festival, embracing one another in the wake of the tragic news.
