Title: Verity
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Suspense/Mystery/Thriller
Published: 2018 (Grand Central Publishing)
Series: No
Plot
Lowen Ashleigh, a small time writer on the brink of financial ruin, accepts a job to finish writing famous author Verity Crawford’s successful book series. When she moves into her and her husband Jeremy’s house to do research into Verity’s writing style, Lowen finds a manuscript revealing Verity’s dark secrets including what really happened the day her daughter died. As mysterious instances occur around Verity, Lowen must decide whether or not to tell Jeremy of her suspicions.
Review
The writing style of this book isn’t that hard to read; I found myself zipping through it in a matter of days. The story itself is another matter entirely. I felt like the the characters were wooden with little to no personality. Verity, a character who pretends to be brain dead for most of the story has the most personality and hers is despicable. From what she writes, she is a callous, cold, calculating woman who only cares about her husband and her writing career. Even when it’s revealed that she might not be who she was in her autobiographical manuscript, the damage had already been done.
Even Lowen, the main character has little feelings in regards to what is happening around her. Any other character would be immediately confronting the husband or leaving to make a report to the police about what was going on in the Crawford household, but nothing occurs. Even with some additional revelations at the end, Lowen does nothing to try and clear her name. I suppose it makes sense because she becomes no better than Verity in the end, but it still makes me mad.
I definitely don’t understand people’s obsession with Colleen Hoover, the author of Verity. She isn’t the type of writer to flesh out her characters, make them more approachable. Even if she wanted to make Verity the person that she is, she certainly didn’t make the suspense or transitions to the plot twist at the end very smooth. If you can’t handle abuse and death of children, don’t read this book. It was awful.
I doubt very much that I’ll wait for her next book with baited breath…
Ashley French 