What Regretting You Actually Is
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover is a romance novel that follows Minx and her mother Laurel's complicated relationship. The story is told from two perspectives and covers grief, first love, and family drama. It's Hoover's debut novel, published in 2020, and sits in the contemporary romance space. Not everyone responds to it the same way. That's the reality. If you want the ebook, Amazon and Apple Books both carry it. The paperback runs around $12.99 and the hardcover is approximately $24.99 depending on the retailer. Audiobook versions exist on Audible. I bought the Kindle edition a while back and it worked fine. If you're looking for free copies on sketchy sites, that's your call but those are generally where piracy lives and it's not worth the hassle. The structure is non-linear. It jumps between timelines, so you're not getting a straightforward chronological narrative. Minx narrates most of it, and then Laurel gets chapters too. The pacing is decent but the romance subplot can feel underdeveloped if you're expecting full emotional payoff from every character arc. The mother-daughter conflict is where the real weight sits.
I hit a wall around chapter twelve where the timeline jumps started making me lose track of who was doing what to whom. My workaround was simple: I kept a small notebook open and wrote down which timeline each chapter belonged to. Two or three days in I had mapped out the chronology myself and it clicked. Don't overthink it. Just track it.
Things Beginners Miss
Most people read this as a straight romance. That's not quite right. The central relationship here is between Minx and her mother, not Minx and Tyler. If you go in expecting a conventional love story you'll probably finish it feeling empty. The romantic elements are there but they're secondary to the family dynamic and the grief processing. Another thing nobody talks about: the POV shifts. Some readers struggle with the switch to Laurel's perspective mid-book. It's intentional but it can feel jarring if you're not prepared for it. The shift happens to give context to Laurel's choices and decisions. Once you accept it as part of the structure it works. Ignoring it makes the second half feel disconnected.
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The Downside Nobody Mentions
Here's the honest part. The book has real limitations. The romance plot feels thin. Secondary characters are barely sketched out. If you're looking for rich worldbuilding or deep character development across the board this isn't it. It's focused on one specific emotional core and everything else serves that. Also, the ending is divisive. Some readers find it satisfying. Others think it wraps things up too quickly given the setup. I fall somewhere in between. It works for what it is but it won't blow anyone away. If that's a problem for you, my suggestion is to skip it and pick up Verity instead. Same author, different tone, much tighter execution. Or go with It Ends with Us if you want something with more emotional depth and less messy plotting.
Should You Read It
Yes if you like emotionally driven romance with family drama woven in. No if you expect a slow-burn, fully fleshed-out love story or complex character development beyond the central relationship. The book runs about 300 pages and reads in a single sitting. You won't get lost in it but you also won't forget it. I finished it in one afternoon and spent the next hour thinking about how the mother-daughter angle could have been handled differently. It's not a great book. It's a decent book that found an audience and stayed relevant because the themes hit a nerve for a lot of readers. That's fair enough.
