7 Biggest Differences Between My Life With the Walter Boys TV Show and Best-Selling Book

Warning: My Life with the Walter Boys season 1 spoilers ahead!

My Life With the Walter Boys is lassoing up more love triangle drama for season 2.

It’s one of the latest book-to-screen adaptations to take the internet by storm, as a love triangle between brothers brews amidst a house of nearly a dozen boys. My Life With the Walter Boys is based on the 2014 book of the same name by Ali Novak, but like other works, the show took on a life of its own.

The story centers around 15-year-old Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez), who becomes an orphan and moves from New York to Colorado to live on a ranch with her mother’s best friend, Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty), and her big family.

My Life With the Walter Boys explores Jackie’s life after tremendous loss — in the series’ first episode, she receives news that her mother, father and older sister, Lucy, were killed in an accident — as she establishes herself in a new small town and navigates a tricky dynamic with two of the Walter boys, former football star and resident bad boy Cole (Noah LaLonde) and sweet, earnest Alex (Ashby Gentry), neither of whom she can stay away from.

Some major changes were made to the show, including the addition of new characters and the chance to expand on established storylines.

Now that My Life With the Walter Boys season 2 is streaming, here’s everything to know about the key differences in Jackie and the Walter family’s written story reflected in the Netflix show.

There are less Walter boys

In the show, the Walter family is comprised of Katherine (Rafferty) and George (Marc Blucas) and their 10 kids: Will (Johnny Link), twins Cole and Danny (Connor Stanhope), Nathan (Corey Fogelmanis), Alex (Gentry), Isaac (Isaac Arellanes), Lee (Myles Vincent Perez), Jordan (Dean Petriw), Parker (Alix West Lefler) and Benny (Lennix James).

However, in the book, there are 11 Walter kids — 10 boys and one young girl, Parker — as Jordan is also a twin. In December 2023, showrunner Melanie Halsall told Entertainment Weekly that it was a deliberate decision to cut one of the sets of twins when adapting the book for the screen, though she didn’t elaborate on why one of the boys got cut. 

“The TV series takes off a little bit from the book — there are fewer boys in the family, for a start. Two of the twin sets became just one, and that’s quite a big change I think people will notice,” she told the outlet.

New characters, new drama

A host of new characters are introduced in the show to help expand the Silver Falls community.

High school guidance counselor Tara (Ashley Tavares), one of Will’s fiancée Haley’s close friends, is a newly introduced character. She’s a source of constant support for Haley as her relationship with Will faces some ups and downs.

She also finds love with new teacher Nikil (Mobeh Jindran). However, things end with the status of their relationship still up in the air in episode 10, as she seems to be crushing on Jackie’s Uncle Richard (Alex Quijano).

Jackie and Cole’s first kiss

In the book, Jackie and Cole kiss long before the ending scene. During a game of truth or dare, which was recreated in the show, Cole is dared to kiss Jackie, and he does.

In the show, though, at the exact moment Cole starts to lean into her during the game, the alcohol she’s had hits her all at once, and she pukes on him and runs off. Viewers instead have to wait until the finale episode to see a kiss between Jackie and the older Walter brother.

Cole and Alex’s fight

In both the book and the show, tensions between Cole and Alex are as high as ever once Jackie comes to town. The brothers have previously been involved with the same girl, Paige, and the experience left Cole with a target on his back. However, he insists that he didn’t intend for the overlap to happen, as he was away all summer and didn’t know about Alex’s relationship with Paige.

In the show, though, as Alex starts dating Jackie, and rumors begin to fly around the school about the Walter brothers, their tension comes to a head, and they brawl in the middle of the school day. Danny, Nathan, Isaac and Lee all rush to separate the fight, but all six of the Walters end up with suspensions as a result — and the release of the pent-up tension does nothing to ease the strain on Cole and Alex’s relationship.

Financial troubles on the ranch

A major stressor for Katherine and George in the latter half of the series is their financial troubles, as a disease spreads through the trees on their expansive Colorado ranch. George fails to secure a loan from the bank to help tide them over, and then ends up meeting with a developer as he and Katherine consider selling the land entirely.

At one point, Jackie overhears the couple’s conversation about how tight money is with so many mouths to feed and considers moving back to New York City with her Uncle Richard, though she doesn’t end up doing so — at least not at that point.

During the season finale, though, with his wedding looming, the oldest Walter boy, Will, seems to have some tricks up his sleeve. He meets with Richard, and they discuss the possibility of opening a resort on some of the ranch’s land, seemingly a way to solve his parents’ financial problem and give him and Haley a new business venture to focus on.

Katherine’s award — and the ensuing moment of reckoning for Cole

One of the perks of adapting a book into a television series is that there’s a lot more time to spend diving into the characters’ storylines. In Walter Boys, more of the Walter parents’ lives are explored, and Katherine’s career as a vet is one of the arcs that gets more airtime. 

In episode 8, Katherine’s work as a vet is highlighted as she’s given a state award, and the award ceremony brings Cole’s bad behavior in light of Jackie and Alex’s budding relationship to a climax. He arrives late to the ceremony and walks in drunk, making a scene with the waiters almost immediately as he asks for more alcohol. Then, in the middle of his mom’s acceptance speech for the award, he stumbles to his feet, knocks into a server and causes a scene, interrupting Katherine’s speech and prompting boos from the crowd. 

Jackie and Will drag Cole outside to allow Katherine her moment on stage, and tensions pique as Cole admits, “I don’t know what I’m doing or who I even am anymore.”

When Jackie offers to help Cole, he drunkenly tells her (and later claims not to remember it) that he wishes she had never come to Silver Falls, to which she replies: “Well, I want my family not to have died, so I guess we both want the same thing.”

The conversation leaves Jackie’s frustration at an all-time high and creates problems with both brothers. Alex says she chose Cole over him, and she resorts to avoiding Cole after he claims not to remember the hurtful comment.

The fate of Jackie’s love triangle

Perhaps the most consequential change made to Jackie and the Walter boys’ story comes in the finale episode, where, after a stressful few days planning Will and Haley’s wedding, Jackie finds out that Cole glued her sister’s teapot back together after it broke several months before.

When Alex tells Jackie he loves her and then passes out from too much champagne at the wedding, she heads out to the shed to confront Cole about the teapot, and the two finally kiss.

In the book, Jackie admits her feelings to Cole, and Alex overhears the conversation. With no fighting involved, Jackie and Alex talk and decide they’re better off as friends, leaving the door open for romance between her and the older Walter brother.

She then decides to spend the summer in N.Y.C., and as she’s on her way to the airport with Danny, Cole stops them and confesses his love for her on the side of the road — and in the pouring rain.

The book ends with the promise of possibility between Jackie and Cole and seemingly no bad blood with Alex, but the show leaves things off ripe for chaos and conflict, as Jackie instead flees Silver Falls for N.Y.C. after her kiss with Cole, leaving only an “I’m sorry” note on her bed.

Episode 10’s ending leaves most questions unanswered. Halsall confirmed to Tudum that Jackie and Alex “don’t split up,” but noted that “they may end up splitting up because of what happens with Cole at the very end.”

She told EW that she hoped the show’s conclusion would shock fans of the book. “What happens at the end will surprise people because that is different than the book, but I’m hoping that gives the audience, both the audience that loves the book and the new audience, a bit of a surprise.”

As for what Jackie herself thinks, Rodriguez told Tudum, “I understand Jackie’s dilemma.”

“Alex is more that puppy love, that friendship, that safe [relationship], but you just love them so much,” she said of the love triangle. “But the Cole one is more the passionate one, the one you shouldn’t love.”