The Snow Girl explained: the book ending & the differences

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The Snow Girl is the new Netflix series released in January 2023, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Spanish writer Javier Castillo. The story adheres quite closely to the book and maintains all the qualities of a well-done thriller. The plot is one of the most chilling: the disappearance of a girl and the frantic search for her by a journalist with a dark past. But there are some significant differences between the series and the book that are interesting to delve into. In this article, we will provide a summary of the plot, the story, and the ending explained, to satisfy the viewers’ curiosity.

You can find the official trailer for The Snow Girl here on Youtube.

The Snow Girl: the plot of the book

A three-year-old girl goes missing during the Thanksgiving parade in New York. After her disappearance, a desperate search begins throughout the city, and both the police and the press try to find little Kiera Templeton. But the days go by, and there is no trace of the girl; the parents begin to lose hope, seeing how little by little they lose interest in the search for Kiera. But a journalism student, Miren Triggs, doesn’t give up on the case; she makes it a personal matter. Miren has been following the case of the girl’s disappearance for years. When, five years later, a VHS tape appears where Kiera is seen playing in an unknown room, she throws herself entirely into investigating all the possibilities through the clues found on the tape.

The Snow Girl: the differences between the book and the series

As we have anticipated, there are some significant differences between the book and the series that partially change the original story and qualify the message. Let’s see them together.

The location

One of the most obvious changes is the place where the plot unravels: in the book The Snow Girl, the explained story takes place in New York, and the disappearance takes place during the Thanksgiving parade; this is obviously quite a substantial change on a cultural level; in the TV series, the story takes place in the Spanish city of Malaga, which is also the hometown of the writer Javier Castillo, and the trail of the little girl is lost during the Three Kings Parade, the most important festivity of the year in Spain, and above all, the most magical one for children. On a visual level, this change produces a less impressive and agoraphobic effect compared to getting lost in the immensity of New York in an immense crowd. The different place obviously changes everything concerning the characters’ names.

The disappearance and the kidnappers

In the book The Snow Girl, little Kiera is only three years old on the day of the disappearance, whereas in the Netflix TV show, Amaya is five; This difference may seem trivial, but it will be significant for another of the adopted changes, regarding the kidnappers. In the book, they were unrelated to Kiera/Amaya’s parents, while in the series, the kidnapper was a patient of Kiera/Amaya’s mother. She works in a fertility clinic, and the patient is a woman who has been trying to have children for years without success. Thanks to the fact that she knew Amaya’s mother, she was able to gain her trust when she was lost, because she saw her mother greeting her a few minutes before.

With the girl’s age, the way The Snow Girl explained the kidnapper’s strategy to keep her away from the world also changes. In the book, the kidnappers convince Kiera/Amaya that the house is the only safe place and that there are electromagnetic waves outside that can make her sick. In the series, the danger is the evil people who live beyond the forest surrounding the house’s garden, so she can be safe only if she doesn’t have contact with other people.

The Slide forum

The most notable change in the series is the part that deals with a p**nographic forum where videos of rapings and photos of children were uploaded, a place that at first seems to be related to the disappearance of Amaya/Kiera. It is a parallel story connected to the rape of the journalist Miren but not with the little girl. This change is crucial in developing the plot of the series; it adds an even darker tone and draws an extremely sick society. In the book, there is no mention of this forum called Slide, and although there is a character similar to Luque, the story is relatively marginal.

The Snow Girl, the ending explained, the book & the TV series: will there be a Season 2?

In conclusion, although there are differences between Netflix’s The Snow Girl and Javier Castillo’s book, the ending is practically the same. Finally, after 12 years, Miren manages to reach the kidnapper through a clue found on the last tape. Once found, Miren, Iris, and Kiera/Amaya end up in a car accident, caused by Iris, who doesn’t want to turn herself in; Iris dies, but Miren and Kiera/Amaya survive. Finally, the parents find their daughter in the hospital, but they know it will be a long road to truly find the daughter they lost that distant day. Miren writes a book about the story of the search for Kiera/Amaya and about the rape she suffered years before; during the presentation of the book, they send her an envelope (similar to the envelopes that contained the VHS tapes of Amaya/Kiera in her room ) where there is a dark polaroid of a bound and gagged woman.

Could there be a Season 2? We know that in 2021, Javier Castillo published a new book titled El Juego del Alma, focusing on this new investigation regarding the girl of the Polaroid. So yes, a Season 2 is definitely possible: let’s wait for Netflix’s decision.

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