Beth's Bookshelf

To say Colleen Hoover’s thriller, “Verity,” haunts me is an understatement. It sits in the back of my mind all day and waits for me to have a spare moment to dedicate to it. And I do. Frequently. I think about this book so often. Ever since I closed the back cover, I’ve been sitting with this feeling of “did she?” and I still haven’t found an answer.

Hoover’s writing is typically romance novels, none of which have been read by me at this point because that’s not a genre I tend to look for, but “Verity” was brought to my attention by a friend who had got it as a Book of the Month book. My job teaching summer school had ended, so I had whole days to dedicate to reading and that’s truly what I’ve been doing since. But back to the book at hand.

It took me a few days to get through the first few chapters. It starts off in a way that should be startling: the narrator, Lowen, happens to be just where a car accident takes place and is in the splash zone, for lack of a better phrase. Lowen has been having a terrible time as of late. Her mother has recently passed, she’s been down on her luck with her writing, and now she’s been coated in a layer of blood that isn’t her own on her way to a work-related meeting. A stranger helps her clean up, loans her his shirt, and leaves her with a blossoming crush. That bit is sweet, I’ll admit. A real knight-in-shining-armor type moment that makes me smile.

She arrives at her publisher’s office and finds out she’s being asked to finish a series written by a famous author, Verity Crawford. Verity writes thrillers with unimaginable horrors (which we unfortunately don’t get to read) and has been involved in an accident, leaving her unable to finish the series herself. Lowen has been chosen to complete it and it turns out that the man who helped her out earlier is none other than Verity’s husband, Jeremy. He invites her to the house to gather any information she needs about the series and the whole story descends into madness.

I’ll admit that it was a book I found hard to get into. Right up until she got to the house, I was worried that this would be a DNF book for me; the first few chapters took me a few days to read. Shortly after Lowen’s arrival at the Crawford home (which is basically an old-timey mansion), things get unsettling increasingly quickly. I devoured the rest of the book in a few hours. Hoover’s writing style is easily digestible and moves fluidly through the story. I found myself wanting to tell everyone about this book after I finished and have loaned it to a few friends now. Each of them have updated me along the way with what’s freaking them out and what’s making them cringe and their reactions to the end are always on par with mine: what’s the truth?

Are there moments to this book that are absolutely so cringe? Yes. Hoover is fantastic at setting up a scenario and dropping in something that is a little bit squicky when you read it. For example, you’ll be reading along and suddenly there’s just a casual bit about Verity biting down into her wooden headboard during sex. That was jarring and also incredibly painful sounding. But the suspense severely outweighs the everything else. If anyone needs a new read, I highly recommend picking up your own copy of “Verity.”