Verity by Colleen Hoover
Verity
by Colleen Hoover
Thriller | Mystery | Fiction
336 Pages
Released October 2021
Rating: ★
Goodreads
Content Warnings
I don’t understand this book. First of all, it’s everywhere on social media. Second of all, it’s got an insanely high Goodreads rating of 4.38. Normally, this would be an encouraging sign but in this case, I just really don’t understand the hype.
This book centers around Lowen, a young, struggling writer. Her prospects are suddenly looking much better when she is offered a lucrative opportunity to write the final three books of a best-selling book series - due to an untimely accident leaving the original author, Verity Crawford, unable to write.
Lowen accepts the position, and in doing so, must travel to the home of Verity Crawford and her husband, Jeremy, to sort through her office in order to gather enough material to finish the series. During her research, Lowen discovers a document - Verity’s Autobiography, which shines a grisly light on the much-loved author. Lowen is faced with the choice of revealing this autobiography to Jeremy, who she is quickly developing feelings for.
I take a lot of issues with this book. First, it starts off in an oddly gory way that, to me, doesn’t make sense at all. I’m not sure if it was to set the tone of the book but since isn’t a horror, it felt out of place. Then comes the offer. Lowen, who has only written one mediocre book herself, is offered a huge amount of money to finish this famous author’s book series (which she has never even read?!).
Then, upon discovering the manuscript and the horrifying words within, she doesn’t immediately share it with Verity’s husband, but instead quietly reads it herself? Not to mention, she very quickly finds herself extremely attracted to Jeremy, while is ailing wife is upstairs. This girl’s got all sorts of questionable morals (the husband too, since he never really makes any effort to establish a professional relationship - even offering that she stay at their home and sleep in their master bedroom??!).
Then of course is your smutty stuff, which I skipped over mostly because I was not invested at all in any of the characters at this point and it was your pretty typical Colleen Hoover smut scene.
And then of course, there is the twist (this is a thriller after all). Which, for me, involved a lot of suspension of disbelief to get on board with. Maybe I’m reading into this book too much, or maybe I’m not reading into this book enough but overall, I hated the characters, I hated the situation, and I hated the twist and I’m having a really difficult time understanding why so many people adored this book.