Most critics are unconvinced, and the negative reviews outnumber the positive three to one. Where there is praise, it gathers around Maika Monroe, whose turn as a mother rebuilding her life after prison is what most reviewers find worth watching, and around the mother-daughter scenes, which several critics say carry more feeling than the romance does. The warmer reviews, from Variety, IndieWire and The AV Club, describe a restrained, old-fashioned weeper, and IndieWire calls it the best Colleen Hoover adaptation to date.
The reservations are about the plot. Critic after critic objects to the coincidences, the forced conflict and the predictable shape of the story, and the harsher reviews find the dialogue strained and the pacing slack. The spread is wide, running from mild approval to outright dismissal at The Observer, Vulture and Deadline. Monroe is not universally admired either: Little White Lies and Time Out single out her performance as the problem rather than the saving grace.
