A Review: “Verity” by Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover’s books have certainly become popular, and although I didn’t particularly enjoy her famous “It Ends with Us” book, I thought I would give her another chance. Let’s dive into this popular thriller.

“Verity” is a story about a woman who questions her sanity after spending weeks in a mansion with a man she barely knows, his young son, and his catatonic wife. Main character Lowen is a novelist tasked with finishing a book series begun by a much more experienced (and successful) writer, Verity Crawford. After a tragic accident, Verity no longer has the ability to do anything on her own and seems almost comatose. Verity’s husband Jeremy describes his wife as being injured with the mental capacity of a child. She has no ability to speak or even move a hand or leg. With the help of Jeremy and her nurse, Verity spends most of her time lying in bed in a secluded room in the upper portion of the mansion.

Although she has a case of imposter syndrome, Lowen reluctantly agrees to finish Verity’s book series. How could she ever write well enough for Verity’s fans? On her very first attempt to work, Lowen discovers a manuscript of Verity and Jeremy’s life together told from Verity’s point of view. Having never met the woman, Lowen thinks that reading the manuscript might help her with writing the book series. But the manuscript reveals much more than Lowen bargained for. Verity seemed to have never wanted children and was unhealthily obsessed with Jeremy and their sex life. The manuscript also gives horrific details of the deaths of their twin daughters. As time passes, Lowen finds herself questioning whether Verity is actually catatonic. To make matters worse, she begins falling for Jeremy after spending so much time with him under one roof.

Sounds like an interesting plot, right? Well, what sounded like an intriguing and thrilling plot quickly turned into an unbelievable, smutty mystery. The book’s chapters switch between Lowen’s point of view in the present and Verity’s manuscript covering past events, beginning with the night she and Jeremy met. Much of the manuscript gives explicit details of Verity and Jeremy’s sex life, which Lowen is drawn to. The Verity in the manuscript is narcissistic and cruel to her children, as she competes with them for attention from her beloved Jeremy – a stark contrast to the woman in a vegetative state in the house. But weird things keep happening, and Lowen is convinced Verity isn’t actually injured.

What I Liked About the Book

• Interesting Plot: I thought the plot was really intriguing in the beginning since it seemed reminiscent of “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier. I liked that Hoover created her own spin on a classic even though I thought her execution could have been better. Maybe I am just too critical of a reader.
• Unreliable Narrator(s): This novel certainly had me second-guessing what was true and what was not true. I truly couldn’t tell if Lowen was going crazy or not. Some chapters are written from Verity’s manuscript, and she also felt like an unreliable narrator.
• A Book within a Book: The manuscript idea was interesting to me as well. Having the Lowen read a chapter of Verity’s manuscript to tell a different version of events was a great way to build suspense and capture my attention.
• Twists and Turns: I did not anticipate what was going to happen in the book, and the ending really had some twists to it that I wasn’t expecting. I can’t say I liked what the twists actually turned out to be, but I appreciate that the author tried to create them.

What I Didn’t Like About the Book

• Toxic Characters: Although both Lowen and Jeremy played all innocent in the beginning of the book, they truly were not characters I could root for. I thought the backdrop of their love story was odd. What kind of man sleeps with another woman while his catatonic wife is upstairs? No matter how I looked at it, Jeremy was not worth the amount of attention Verity or Lowen gave him.
• Scenes Depicting Hatred of Children: As I write this blog post, I am 6 months pregnant myself, and I had to skim a lot of the Verity chapters because she wrote about hating her own children and even trying to kill them. These were incredibly hard scenes for me to read. If I had known they were going to be in this book, I would not have chosen to read it.
• The Sex Scenes: Let’s be honest: sex scenes are what sell books. But authors can write them in a classy way, or they can write them crudely. I personally thought the sex scenes in this book were pretty crude. Maybe I’m a bit of a prude, but there are only so many times I can take reading about a woman going down on a man in one novel. That’s all I gotta say about that.
• The Ending: OK, so I won’t reveal what happens in the end, but let’s just say that the two lovebirds Jeremy and Lowen were made for each other.

My Rating: “Verity” by Colleen Hoover is Not Worth Reading

I’m going against the grain here to say that I thought this book wasn’t worth all the hype. This novel has 4.31 stars on Goodreads based on more than 3 million ratings and only 15% of those ratings are 1-3 stars. Personally, I would have liked this book more had the Verity manuscript not come into play, although it was a unique idea. Overall, I think this book doesn’t come even close to the intrigue Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” has. I think the sex scenes in this book cheapened the plot and made it less interesting and seemed more of a tactic to sell the book. I would have liked to have seen more character development of Jeremy, since both Lowen and Verity seemed quite taken with him, and I didn’t really understand why.

Other books similar to this one on Goodreads are The Housemaid by Freida McFadden; The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides; and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.