On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 29%, based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Longest Ride is less manipulative than the average Nicholas Sparks film, but it's still saccharine and hopelessly contrived — not that it'll matter to the target audience."[17] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 33 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[18] It earned an average grade of "A" in CinemaScore poll on an A+ to F scale,[19] marking the first Sparks feature adaptation to earn an A in 11 years since The Notebook (2004).[20]