Friends will say it’s great. Find one person who will tell you where they stopped paying attention.

Encouragement and information are different things, and most people offer the first because they like you. What kindness cannot give you is the location of the problem, the exact moment somebody drifted, checked their phone, stopped following. One honest reader is worth a dozen warm ones for that purpose. You want both, and only one of them improves the work.

Ask one person a precise question about where they stopped paying attention. Make it easy for them to answer honestly by not defending anything. Thank them properly, because that is how you keep a reader like that.