I Read This So You Don’t Have To – Verity

I read this book years ago before I deeped that Colleen Hoover was insane and so are her books. She has been rightly criticised for romanticising abuse in a lot of her stories and often gives the wrong message to a very impressionable audience. For that reason alone I wouldn’t necessarily recommend her books to anyone. However, Verity is a very popular BookTok recommendation. It is very different from a lot of Colleen Hoover’s regular work in that it is technically a thriller, not a romance. However, if you already thought Colleen Hoover was questionable, this will simply solidify that opinion.  Verity is a disastrous mess that glues you to the page.

SPOILER WARNING!

Trigger warning: child abuse, murder, a miscarriage attempt, and just lots of other disturbing stuff so please be careful before you read it.

Genre

You could call this a romantic thriller, however there is nothing romantic about it.

The Vibe in 3 Words

WHAT. IS. HAPPENING??

The Gist

Verity by Colleen Hoover is a psychological thriller following struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired to complete a bestselling book series after its author, Verity Crawford, is left ‘catatonic’ by an accident. While sifting through Verity’s notes, Lowen stumbles upon Verity’s autobiography—filled with shocking confessions about her marriage and the tragic deaths of her children. As Lowen grows closer to Verity’s husband, Jeremy, paranoia creeps in: Is Verity truly incapable, or is she hiding in plain sight?

Best For? (Or Maybe Not?)

As someone who was just getting into thrillers, I would have said if you’re new to the genre this might work for you, it’s not overly complicated and you would be captivated by the twists and turns. However, if you love a thriller and you are well versed in the genre, you’re likely to be underwhelmed as it is oh-so predictable and not as mind-bending as she probably thought it was. 

Characters

Not one of these characters has a single redeemable quality. Lowen simply wanted this married woman’s man and would excuse everything (even murder!) to get him. Jeremy is sex obsessed and vapid and we don’t get to know much about Verity apart from what we discover in this autobiography that underpins the whole plot. I felt sorry for the poor son who was surrounded by adults with horrendous decision-making skills. 

Where It Lost Me

I’m not convinced the book ever had me, but I won’t lie it was such a complete train wreck that I couldn’t look away from it. I was so into it but if I’m very honest, if I put it down and allowed myself to reflect, I’m not sure I would have picked it back up again. One thing Colleen does is utilise the shock factor to keep us here. Also, the sex scenes are gratuitous and overdone. They play no part in supporting or progressing the plot in any way. 

Writing Style

Honestly, in my opinion, Colleen was trying too hard. Romance is her bread and butter and she was trying to convince us that she’s multifaceted. I do respect this, as sometimes it is good to venture out of your comfort zone. But if you’re going to do something and get other people to pay for it, please do it well. This book is super sinister and disturbing just for the sake of it. I felt like the ‘darkness’ was used once again for the shock value almost like she was thinking how many things could I throw in to really ‘thrill’ my readers and honestly I didn’t appreciate it, especially when it had to do with child abuse ( I won’t go into much detail but this is a huge theme in the book and I think it is so callously and irresponsibly handled).

Biggest Frustration

Outside of the fact that there are about a thousand plot holes, my main gripe is the ending. Think Twilight Breaking Dawn – it was all a vision…this is just like that. At this point, we’re committed to the story and all these dark and disturbing things that happen in Verity’s autobiography that make her deserving of her untimely end. So having all of that undone is a massive screw you to the story. It was all a lie and Jeremy supposedly knew all the horrible things Verity apparently did and tried to kill her because of it.

However, she didn’t do these things and pretended to be brain-dead because she was just scared of him? Right. I guess this was meant to be a twist right at the end, but it completely falls flat because one, Lowen doesn’t care enough for the discovery to be meaningful, she just wants her man, and two it’s not going to all of a sudden make us look at Lowen differently as she is already shown to be extremely morally dubious, so what was the point? It betrays the original tone of the story.

Final Verdict

This book is not for me. I can see why a lot of people like it. It’s fast-paced, visceral and captivating. However, if you dig deeply, it tries too hard and misses the mark very often. It also utilises really strong and traumatic themes in a very blase way. For that reason especially, I wouldn’t suggest you read it. But then again, who am I to tell you what to do?