 "Slate"s Polly Shulman found the book to be "charmless, didactic" and egoistic since she felt it revolved around Madonna and her daughter.Shulman added that ""The English Roses" is a dull little thing, though not incompetent.Madonna does understand the basic structure of storytelling—perhaps too well", with multiple cliches present while making the titular characters "so passive that they might as well be good."