Verity: The thriller that will capture your heart and blow your mind

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The mid-career success story of Colleen Hoover, a fortysomething Texas mother of three who has written more than 20 novels across multiple genres, is partly a testament to the power of social media. And yet that’s only a piece of the equation. As far as current sales go, Hoover is without rival. I couldn’t help thinking it’s a premonition, and true enough, Lowen discovers Verity’s manuscript soon after and we discover it’s not just the soul of the house that’s dark. Verity Crawford is a writer’s writer in Lowen’s world. She is extremely popular and famous. However, things don’t usually go the way that we like just because of our financial or commercial success. She was injured rather badly in an accident and is not in the position to end the final three novels in one of her series. When it’s finally revealed that Verity was going essentially a writing exercise, I though that was pretty clever, especially since Hoover makes a point to keep reminding us that Verity writes in the voice of an antagonist and how that’s such an important component of her books. In the manuscript, Verity describes resenting her daughters because Jeremy loves them more than her. Verity also admits to loving one of her daughters ( Chastin) more than the other ( Harper), and she has a dream that Harper will someday kill Chastin.

Lowen Ashleigh, the ghostwriter hired to complete the prolific author Verity Crawford’s work, discovers a horrifying truth – an autobiographical manuscript written by Verity, detailing her innermost thoughts and how she dealt with (and caused) the tragedies that befell the Crawford family. Now bedridden, Verity seems harmless and lost to the world, but Lowen can’t shake off the awareness that Verity is very much conscious and is hiding something more.Honestly, if you like the idea of a mystery-thriller romance novel, then this book is probably a pretty solid iteration of that type of book, especially if you are someone who would enjoy the creepy and suspenseful atmosphere of the book. The rest of the book then keeps you gripped for as long as it can until you start to guess what’s coming at every turn. There’s a feeling of “well yeah, obviously that was going to happen” for the final third or so of the book. However, without spoiling too much, you should definitely keep reading! For two reasons, actually. One, it is so compulsively readable that it's almost impossible to put it down until you've finished it. And two, it is seriously creepy and disturbing. Warnings for depictions of child abuse and some graphic violence. However, as the circumstances around her change, we also see her begin to show sides of her personality we haven’t been privy to before, sides she herself didn’t even know existed. She begins to plot ways in which she could snatch Jeremy away from his ailing wife, to weigh the idea of sharing with him all of his wife’s disturbing confessions in her autobiography. Slowly but surely, we see her insidious aspect crawl out to the surface, which, in my opinion, made her infinitely more interesting and unpredictable.

Have you ever finished a book and thought… WTF did I just read? Verity is one of those books that will do that to you. Word to the wise for CoHo fans: this is not your typical book from Colleen Hoover. It’s amazingly written and it’s a completely captivating read, but it’s so different from anything she’s ever put out before. Most surprising was the level of creepiness Hoover managed to incite. A level even some seasoned suspense writers fail to attain. From someone who reads in the genre consistently and watches horror, it’s quite the feat for me to feel this level of anxiety. For my stomach to be twisted in knots, in anticipation of what’s to come—but, it happened.

The writing here is, admittedly, pretty amazing. Character development and plot movement, as well as the establishment of tone, is all done masterfully. What is ludicrous, however, is the plot itself.