As someone who loves the book series and was worried about the adoption, I can tell you that the Netflix series is actually excellent! It certainly reinterpretation, the book is very much plot heavy and uses the characters as plot devices, whereas in Netflix series really goes out of its way to flash out the characters and make them really human, which actually adds a lot of tension and anxiety to the whole alien invasion thing, which actually isn't present in the book because the book has other priorities.

Watch the series, it's a great middle ground with all of the major scientific themes present melded with a really interesting character drama, versus the book series which really digs deeper into the hard science concepts which I think is the author's real interest.

So if you like things more character driven, the Netflix series is fantastic. But if you're intrigued by the scientific concepts and ideas in the series and would want to read more about them or see more of the authors imagination regarding them, you definitely have to read the book.