A faithful adaptation of the novel written by Colleen Hoover, follows a girl named Lily Bloom who meets and has a relationship with a man named Ryle, but throughout the story, she is troubled by her past with a homeless boy from her teenage years. 

The movie starring Blake Lively (Lily Bloom) and Justin Baldoni (Ryle) is a very accurate adaptation of the book with only slight differences. There are very mixed emotions surrounding this movie. Some people argue that the casting choice of Blake Lively was only done to get the film more attention. Some people even go as far as to say this glamorizes abusive relationships. In contrast, some people also say that it is a beautiful movie that raises awareness for abusive relationships, while also being an amazing love story.

I was not very impressed with Blake Lively’s (Lily Bloom) acting performance, as someone who loved this book so much when it came out, I do not believe she portrayed the character that well. Lily Bloom is supposed to be in her mid to late twenties and Blake Lively is thirty seven  years old. Watching this movie, I feel like she was reading off a script and not putting enough character in her performance.

Justin Baldoni (Ryle) ,on the other hand, did an amazing job. He did an excellent job at portraying a man who has good intentions and who will gaslight people to prove he’s a good person. He had a very real performance; I felt a big variety of emotion while watching him.

Casting Blake Lively in this movie to me felt like a PR stunt which took away a lot of the emotion I should have been feeling during this movie. It has an amazing plot, and great characters, but I couldn’t get fully around it.

The movie felt somewhat fast paced, and I couldn’t really get a chance to connect with the characters before the movie was already over.

I do think this movie had so much potential with the majority of the cast being amazing, and the story that it follows. It has a really deep and emotional storyline, but some of the weird choices that were made kind of took away from that.

I have very mixed emotions about this movie. On one hand it follows a beautiful and heart wrenching story, and on the other hand, the potential it had and not living up to it ruined it for me. Therefore I give it a 5/10 on the Lilly scale.