Verity by Colleen Hoover is a novel that will keep you gripped and guessing throughout. It is a little outside of Hoover’s usual genre but her talent for writing stories that are full of twists and turns will have you constantly on the edge of your seat.
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling author when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime to complete three novels for bestselling writer Jeremy Crawford. But when she arrives at the Crawford home, she finds a mysterious autobiography that opens a Pandora’s Box of terrifying family secrets.
Plot
Verity is a tragic romantic thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover. It tells the story of Lowen Ashleigh, who is a struggling author in her early thirties and recently lost her mother. She has a job offer to finish a series of books by a famous writer who was injured in a car accident, and she accepts the job, leaving her safe haven in New York City for a family estate in Vermont.
The job consists of completing the last three novels in a best-selling murder suspense series by Verity Crawford, who was severely injured in a car accident. It’s a life-changing opportunity for Lowen, who is struggling with the loss of her mother and can’t escape the guilt she feels over her growing attraction to Verity’s husband, Jeremy.
Lowen arrives at the Crawford house with her son, Crew, and she starts digging through Verity’s notes for the rest of the novels. Eventually, she finds a manuscript that reveals terrifying admissions about the Crawford family’s past, as well as insight into the tragedies Verity has faced over the years.
Initially, Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing that its contents would devastate him, but as she begins to develop feelings for him, she realizes how much he could benefit from reading his wife’s words. The horrific truth revealed in Verity’s autobiography would erode Jeremy’s trust in his beloved wife, making it impossible for him to love her anymore.
In the meantime, he and Lowen begin spending more time together and developing a serious relationship. They begin to spend more time in Verity’s home, and they develop a deep connection. They even begin to have sex.
But what if they end up telling the wrong people about Verity’s secret? As a result of this, the story turns into a mystery that’s hard to solve.
With the help of the reader, we’re able to piece together who Verity really is and why she might have committed such horrifying crimes. There are plenty of twists and turns in this novel, but Hoover’s writing is superb, with enough tension to make the whole book a rollercoaster ride.
Characters
Verity, a struggling writer, is hired to write the final three novels of an acclaimed book series. She is nervous about the job because Verity’s books have never sold well and she is afraid that she will fail.
She enters the Crawford house and looks around, seeing stacks of books and papers everywhere. In one box she sees an autobiographical manuscript entitled So Be It.
The manuscript is filled with dark secrets and details about Verity’s life that are troubling. Lowen begins reading and quickly becomes absorbed in it.
Jeremy, Verity’s husband, is a grieving father who has recently lost his twin daughters in a car accident. He’s trying to cope with their death while also trying to raise his young son, Crew. He’s also trying to keep his relationship with Verity alive.
In the past, Jeremy and Verity have had a complicated relationship. She’s not very happy about the way he treats her, and she feels that he doesn’t love her as much as he does his children.
When Jeremy gets transferred to Los Angeles for work, Verity starts writing to pass the time. Soon she’s got a successful book.
After she learns that she’s pregnant, Verity wants to have a baby girl as well as a boy. Jeremy loves them, but doesn’t want to lose her. She goes through all sorts of tricks to get pregnant, like taking sleeping pills and drinking wine until she miscarries.
Eventually, she tries to have the baby with another man. She also uses a wire hanger to try and bleed until she miscarrys.
While the plot of Verity is very simple, it doesn’t stop Hoover from putting the readers through a series of surprising developments that shock and leave them feeling very uneasy. The story’s pacing is great, with each shock coming in fast and with breath-taking revelations.
The book also has a lot of great character development and is written in such a way that Lowen becomes the point of view for most of the story. She’s a bit unreliable at times and she’s not exactly the most trustworthy person, but she is there to tell the reader how things are really going.
Themes
Verity is a thrilling, scandalous read that’s short enough to finish in a single weekend. The big, third act twist is familiar to most experienced thriller readers, but it’s still a riveting story that genuinely leaves you guessing.
The characters are complex, realistic and captivating. They feel naturally balanced and host to both good and evil, allowing the plot to build as one side is pushed into a more dangerous position.
Characters are an important part of any novel, and Verity’s is a particularly strong one. In the beginning, self-effacing and agoraphobic Verity is a starving artist who writes in her spare time to pay for the food she doesn’t have. She’s a very good writer, but her stories are often quite dark and unsettling.
As Lowen reads Verity’s manuscript, she discovers that her wife is not the happy, loving, book-loving person she once was. She’s also become suspicious of Verity’s “tragedies.” And the more Lowen learns about Verity’s books, the more she suspects her of being a killer.
While some of the dark themes in this book do add to the drama, they’re sometimes overdone and feel like Hoover was trying to shock readers with a trite, pointless gimmick. There are also some elements that seem to be added just for the shock factor and don’t serve a purpose in the narrative, such as a character’s reliance on drugs or explicit sexual content.
Friendship is a huge theme in this book, as Julie and Maddie are extremely close and deeply connected even though they’re separated for much of the book. They’re bonded together so strongly that they both think of each other often, and their relationship is a major part of the book’s plot.
Another theme in this book is that the truth rarely comes out clearly. Some people cover up their true names for fear of being discovered, and other people use nicknames or other names that mean something to them. But in the end, when a fellow prisoner asks Julie which name she’s called by, she tells her the true name that she’s always been known by.
Overall
Verity is a dark, creepy thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat. It’s a story with heavy sex scenes, morally corrupt characters, obsession that drives people to do things they would never think of doing, and an ending that leaves you feeling conflicted.
The main character of the book is Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who recently lost her mother. Her publisher wants her to start promoting her next book but she can’t stand the idea of doing something that will only make her more miserable.
A man named Jeremy Crawford approaches Lowen and offers her a job of a lifetime: helping him write the remaining books in his popular thriller series. When Lowen arrives at the Crawford home she is overwhelmed by years of notes and outlines, but what she doesn’t expect to find is an unfinished autobiography by Verity Crawford that is disturbing page after page.
Throughout the autobiography, Verity admits to having a twisted view of her husband and children. She claims that she had a love-hate relationship with her twins, Chastin and Harper. She also reveals that she secretly tried to induce a miscarriage. She also says that she has irrational paranoia about Harper trying to kill her daughter one day.
Over the course of a few days, Lowen reads So Be It chapter by chapter, and she can’t help but become absorbed in Verity’s harrowing, horrifying story. She discovers a lot about Verity’s deepest thoughts and darkest secrets, and she starts to feel more and more drawn to Jeremy as she begins to uncover the truth.
At the same time, Jeremy and Lowen are both falling in love with each other. Eventually, they both decide to read the autobiography and tell their loved ones about it.
But, they soon learn that their love is not enough to overcome the horrors in Verity’s autobiography. She reveals that she hated Chastin, but developed maternal feelings for Harper. She also tries to murder her children.
At the end of Verity’s autobiography, Jeremy realizes that Verity killed her daughter, and she admits to him that she was faking her condition. He then suffocates her in front of her son. This scene is incredibly unsettling, and it really puts the whole story in perspective.
