Editors Reads Verdict
Regretting You stands out in Hoover's catalog for its dual-POV structure alternating between a mother and teenage daughter, giving the book unusual emotional breadth. The family drama is more layered than a straightforward romance, making it one of her most mature works.
What We Loved
- Dual mother-daughter perspective adds genuine complexity to the family dynamic
- Grief and betrayal are handled with unusual emotional honesty
- Morgan's teenage voice feels authentic rather than performed
- The plot moves quickly without sacrificing character depth
Minor Drawbacks
- Some romantic subplots feel rushed given the weightier family themes
- Resolution leans slightly convenient given the magnitude of the tragedy
- Secondary characters are thinly drawn
Key Takeaways
- → Grief changes family relationships in ways that are difficult to predict or control
- → Betrayal can reshape every memory of a person, not just the moment of discovery
- → Teenagers process trauma differently from adults but no less deeply
- → Rebuilding trust requires honesty even when honesty is painful
- → Love and forgiveness are choices that must be actively made after loss
| Author | Colleen Hoover |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Montlake Romance |
| Pages | 388 |
| Published | December 10, 2019 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Contemporary Fiction, Romance, Women's Fiction |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Readers of contemporary fiction who enjoy emotionally complex family drama alongside romance, particularly those who appreciate dual-perspective storytelling. |
Grief, Betrayal, and Two Women Finding Themselves
Regretting You opens with a tragedy that reframes everything that follows: a car accident that kills Chris — husband to Morgan, father to teenage Clara — and simultaneously exposes a devastating secret he had been keeping from both of them. From that opening rupture, Colleen Hoover builds a novel that is less about romance than about how a family tries to survive when its foundation has been revealed as a lie.
The dual perspective is the book’s strongest structural choice. Morgan and Clara narrate alternating chapters, and Hoover gives each voice a distinct texture. Morgan’s sections carry the weight of adult grief layered with betrayal; Clara’s are lit with the particular intensity of teenage emotion, where everything feels both enormous and confusingly new. The friction between their worldviews — Clara idealizing her father, Morgan furious with him — creates the novel’s central tension.
More Than a Romance Novel
Hoover is primarily known for her romance writing, but Regretting You operates closer to women’s fiction or family drama. The romantic subplots — Morgan reconnecting with an old flame, Clara developing feelings for her best friend’s brother — feel secondary to the central question of how these two women will negotiate their shared grief and separate needs.
This is both the novel’s strength and a mild weakness. Readers coming for a romance may feel the love stories are undercooked. Readers willing to follow Hoover into more complicated emotional territory will find the mother-daughter dynamic genuinely rewarding, with moments of tenderness and conflict that ring true.
Where It Succeeds and Where It Strains
The book handles Morgan’s anger well — the specific, corrosive quality of betrayal by someone you can no longer confront is rendered with care. Clara’s sections occasionally tip into melodrama, though Hoover pulls back before they lose credibility entirely.
The resolution is tidier than the setup probably warrants, with reconciliation arriving somewhat quickly given the scale of the central betrayal. But Hoover is generous with her characters in a way that feels less like evasion than earned hope.
Final Verdict
Regretting You is Hoover working in a more emotionally ambitious register than her lighter romances. It is not a perfect novel, but it is a notably sincere one, and its exploration of grief and family loyalty gives it staying power beyond the immediate read.
Our rating: 4.1/5 — A moving family drama that uses romance as a frame rather than a destination, showing Hoover at her most emotionally serious.
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