We’re now three films into the Colleen Hoover-verse, and finally, we’ve got a pretty good one with “Reminders of Him.” Turns out all we needed was a female director to understand the tone of a domestic melodrama that centers around a woman’s trauma and her path to healing. Vanessa Caswill, who helmed the charming Netflix rom-com “Love at First Sight,” directs “Reminders of Him” with a laser focus on what matters here: the romance and the redemption.

To catch you up to speed: Colleen Hoover is the wildly successful author of 24 romance and young adult novels that she started self-publishing in 2012, before she was picked up by a publishing house. She’s sold over 20 million books and there are more Hoover movie adaptations on the way — essentially, she’s single-handedly resurrected the long dormant female melodrama.

The first big-screen adaptation of her work was “It Ends With Us,” starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, which is now better known for the legal quagmire in which Lively and Baldoni, who also directed the film, are embroiled. Last fall brought “Regretting You,” a frankly wacky love rectangle directed by Josh Boone, starring Allison Williams, Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood, Willa Fitzgerald, Mckenna Grace and Mason Thames. Now, Caswill brings “Reminders of Him” to the big screen, starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, with a script by Hoover and Lauren Levine.

Hoover pens wildly plotted tales of female suffering and salvation, wrapped up in motherhood, love triangles and car accidents. Often, epistolary journals serve as framing devices, and the character names are inexplicable at best. While “Regretting You” got bogged down in its interfamilial partner swap and wacky tonal swings, Caswill holds the focus on the issues, and she has an incredibly talented leading lady in Monroe, who sells her character and her plight with an earnest authenticity we haven’t previously seen in a Hoover joint.

Romantic melodrama is a new turn for scream queen Monroe, best known for horror films like “It Follows,” “Longlegs” and “Watcher.” But her skill for horror performance translates well: Monroe’s large, expressive eyes convey the anguish, grief and guilt of her character, Kenna Rowan, as she fights for her life, not against a terrifying monster, but her own tragic past.

Kenna has just arrived back in Laramie, Wyoming, after a stint in prison, hoping to meet the daughter she gave birth to while cuffed to a hospital bed. She waived her parental rights to the parents of her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), who was killed in a car accident when Kenna was behind the wheel, under the influence. His death is why she served five years for manslaughter, but his loss — and the loss of their daughter — is a yawning chasm of grief.

Monroe inhabits Kenna’s toughness and her vulnerability: we believe her in gritty, hardscrabble situations like the run-down motel where she finds a home, and eventually community. We believe her as a delicate, if inscrutable, creature in need of a helping hand, which is how the handsome, steady Ledger Ward (Withers) sees her when she wanders into his bar.

Ledger is instantly intrigued by Kenna until he discovers their complex shared history. See, Ledger was Scotty’s best friend, and he’s now a surrogate father figure to Scotty and Kenna’s daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic). (Conveniently, Ledger was away playing in the NFL during Scotty and Kenna’s whirlwind romance and they never met).

You can probably imagine how things play out for Ledger and Kenna as the two most attractive people in a too-small town, who have intense sexual tension simmering between them, and who really, very much, should not be dating each other, at all, ever, for a multitude of reasons.

But that tension persists, even as Kenna and Ledger absorb the stakes. There’s also palpable romantic chemistry between Kenna and Scotty in flashbacks — their quirky meet cute at the Dollar Den is beautifully photographed, and Caswill demonstrates a few other deftly executed dreamy moments. Some cheesiness does abide: there are a few too many drone shots of the rugged Western landscape by cinematographer Tim Ives, and a rockin’ twangy country score by Tom Howe.

Some of that is to be expected, but Caswill does keep it grounded in the connection between Kenna and Ledger, and in the real issues, rather than tawdry town gossip or wild miscommunications. “Reminders of Him” is almost a social justice film about the carceral system, as Kenna navigates trying to land on her feet as an ex-con, burdened with the memories and consequences of her appalling experience giving birth in prison.

It’s not always easy to navigate the tonal landmines of a Colleen Hoover yarn. That Caswill, Monroe and Withers do so with aplomb and emotion proves what these films can be: deeply felt, transporting romances to be taken seriously.

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'REMINDERS OF HIM'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for sexual content, strong language, drug content, some violent content, and brief partial nudity)

Running time: 1:54

How to watch: In theaters March 13

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