Verity Plot summary

Lowen Ashleigh isn’t having a great time. Her writing career is stalled, her mother has just died and her finances are in shambles. As if to add insult to injury, on her way to a meeting with her editor she witnesses a horrible car accident. But there’s an upside to this mess of a meeting: Jeremy Crawford. Husband to the bestselling author Verity Crawford, he wants Lowen to agree to ghostwrite the remainder of his wife’s ongoing series, as she isn’t able to write it herself. Lowen reluctantly agrees, and heads to the Crawford family home to start getting to grips with Verity’s notes. As she works to get to know the mysterious writer though, she discovers dark secrets at the heart of this already-traumatised family. And when she starts to fall for Jeremy, it only complicates things further.

Content warnings

• Pregnancy
• Abortion
• Emotional abuse/neglect
• Violence, including against children

My thoughts on Verity

This was my first ever Colleen Hoover book, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I knew there was hype. I didn’t know much about why. So, I did my best to approach it with an open mind.

It certainly opens on a striking note, with Lowen getting up-close and personal with a horrifically violent car accident. So close, in fact, that she ends up with the stranger’s blood all over her. Luckily, Jeremy is on hand to lend her a shirt and help her clean up. Not that she knows who he is until she runs into him at her editor’s meeting a little while later.

The whole thing puts an incredibly grim slant on what is very nearly a meet-cute between Lowen and Jeremy. The unsettling mood it creates is apt for the novel as a whole. But it never comes up again, which feels a little odd considering that it would be a traumatic event for most people. And I think that pretty much sums up my main issue with Verity. The novel works hard to set up an atmosphere, but doesn’t give much thought to the materials it’s using to do so or what the real impact of those things should be.

Lowen feels like a blank slate much of the time

I found it tricky to connect with Lowen. She’s fairly impassive most of the time, her responses to situations tending to be muted. It doesn’t feel like she’s meant to be unlikeable as such, just kind of distant. At first this concern could take a backseat. The beginning of the book gives you a lot to process, from the various tidbits of background information on Lowen’s life to the strange set-up at the Crawford’s house. Along with the protagonist, I found myself focusing a lot on what’s going on and trying to put pieces together.

As she got more information though, and started to settle into a sort of routine, her impassiveness started to bother me more.

Early on in her time at Jeremy and Verity’s house, she finds a draft of an autobiography by Verity. She obviously never intended it to be read but, since Lowen’s job is to get to know the incapacitated writer, she figures she should probably dive in. It’s enormously disturbing, and grows more so with almost every chapter. And yet, Lowen reads it painfully slowly. Despite the fact that she’s growing increasingly afraid and suspicious of this woman, she rations out this autobiography in bafflingly small increments. It’s obviously necessary to pace out the plot of the book – very little actually happens, so developments in the manuscript sort of stand in for more conventional plot development – but it felt forced and somewhat frustrating.

Verity is an extremely atmospheric read

To give Hoover credit, she does a great job creating an atmosphere of tension and unease. Strange, inexplicable events, combined with the creeping horror of the autobiography’s revelations, did have me feeling genuinely disturbed at points.

Unfortunately, upon closer examination a lot of the building blocks of that atmosphere kind of… don’t make sense? Particularly after finishing the book, at which point the whole thing looks more ridiculous than anything else. I’m not going to give any specifics about the ending of Verity, because this is a spoiler-free zone. What I will say is that it took me from being moderately invested, if a little skeptical, to rolling my eyes and seriously questioning BookTok’s judgement.

The romantic component was fine, but a little lacking in chemistry

Jeremy was a perfectly nice character, if a bit on the bland side. The fact that both Lowen and Verity became kind of obsessed with him felt odd, given he didn’t seem to be anything special, but I was willing to roll with it.

I know some people have a strong aversion to the developing feelings between Lowen and Jeremy in the book, given that his wife is right there in the house. For me, the fact that her injury seems to have rendered her a completely blank slate, unable to speak or move, changes things. Is it a little uncomfortable? Sure. But I didn’t personally find it morally egregious.

Honestly, my bigger issue with the romance was that it just wasn’t particularly compelling. Considering it was one of the most significant storylines, I just didn’t feel there was enough chemistry there to justify its position in the foreground. If anything, the slightly taboo element of Jeremy still being married was the closest we got to romantic tension.

Verity isn’t a bad choice if you enjoy a sinister vibe

If you’re here for the atmosphere, first and foremost, you could do worse than Verity. But I’d sooner direct people towards something by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for a similarly eerie atmosphere with more satisfying payoff. I don’t know whether I’ll end up reading another Colleen Hoover, but if anybody thinks I’ve started on a bad foot by reading Verity first I’m very open to suggestions! Let me know if the comments if you think there’s something unmissable by her that I should check out. Failing that, I think I’m going to go back to fantasy for a little bit.