The Independent gave Spare a rating of four out of five stars, with Lucia Pavia writing "the Duke of Sussex hits his stride on paper in this breathtakingly frank book." Also writing for The Independent, Jessie Thompson believed that the book's content was "horrifyingly personal" and "too private" and added that "The joke that Harry has broken his silence – 'again' – is turning into a cliché. This is the opposite of silence; a constant cacophony." Writing for the same newspaper, Tom Peck argued that readers could not take Harry's arguments seriously when making those arguments "also makes you a hundred million dollars or more". He also claimed that if Harry complains about press intrusion and security "he should simply shut up and not continue feeding the beast he claims to loathe". He believed that with the book, Harry had shown "That his family is a neurotic mess, that it is in what he calls a mutually parasitic relationship with the tabloid press, and that he has – seemingly deliberately – made it almost impossible to make peace with them again."
