A promotional poster for the film “My Fault: London” depicts Nick (Gabriel Guevara) and Noah (Nicole Wallace) in their racing gear. The film follows their budding romance, as they navigate rocky relationships with their parents. Promotional image courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

Romance movies are every teenage girl’s guilty pleasure, myself included. However, arguably the greatest, most heart-wrenching romance movies of all time are decades old — “Titanic,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Notebook” immediately come to mind. Modern romance movies often lack actual romance and play into overused tropes, making them boring and predictable. Of course, there are exceptions. I’d be remiss to mention recent masterpieces such as “La La Land” and “A Star is Born.”

On my quest to discover newer quality romance movies, I stumbled across a scene from “My Fault: London” on TikTok. When I saw the movie was streaming on Amazon Prime Video for free, I decided to give it a shot. The film, released Feb. 13, is an adaptation of “Culpable,” a three-book series. “Culpa Mía,” the original Spanish adaptation of the series, debuted in 2023.

“My Fault: London” follows Noah, an American teenage girl and race car driver. She moves to London after her mother starts dating a wealthy British businessman, leaving behind her boyfriend and best friend. The mother and daughter move into the grand estate, where Noah runs into her new step-brother and future lover (definitely not weird at all), Nick. Nick embodies the overdone “Bad Boy” archetype, participating in underground racing, a shared interest with Noah, and bare-knuckle brawling.

From the start of the film, the plot is difficult to follow, as several components feel unnecessary. For example, Noah’s boyfriend cheats on her with her best friend, setting up the budding relationship between Noah and Nick. However, he later appears in London, which contributed nothing to the plot. In addition, the scenes between Nick and his estranged, alcoholic mother confuse the storyline further.

There are also many aspects of the story that were severely underdeveloped and seemed to pop up out of nowhere — everything having to do with Noah’s incarcerated father. The plot twist at the end felt tacked on and did not advance the plot, nor contribute to any character development.

Nick and Noah undoubtedly had good chemistry in the film, which was the only reason the movie was even slightly entertaining. However, it felt wrong to root for them, as they were referred to multiple times as siblings. The acting in the film was decent, but not standout, and none of the characters were particularly likable.

Overall, “My Fault: London” lacked substance and felt like an unnecessary additional adaptation of the book series. Safe to say, I will not be watching the next two sequel films which are set to release in the next couple of years. If you are looking for a solid cheesy romance series, might I suggest “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight.”