Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Romance
Pub. date: Dec. 2018 (read Nov. 2019)

Every year I see the new Colleen Hoover book and say, “nah, I don’t think I’m gonna read her new book this year.” Then every year she gets nominated in the Goodreads Choice Awards and I decide to read it anyways.

I heard all kinds of reviews about how f-ed up this book is, which are all totally true. Verity is filled with plot twists, suspense, and a really creepy atmosphere, but the biggest question the book leaves me with is this: who the hell classed this book as a romance?!!!

Hoover is known for her romances, which to be honest I don’t really love, but in the last few years she’s been branching out from her normal material in favour of some more thought provoking storylines and social commentary. But romance has still always been central to her stories, so I was surprised when I started reading this one and found myself smack dab in the middle of a mystery thriller! I like a good mystery thriller, but I find them a bit repetitive after a while. Not Verity though – it gripped me from the very start and held my attention to the last page. Hoover still weaves some romance into the story (which I wasn’t that big a fan of), but I was able to move past it because the rest of the writing was great!

I’ve said this before, but Hoover is one of the best first chapter writers I’ve ever encountered. Starting a new book often feels like a bit of a chore because it takes a while to sink into the writing and the narrative, but once I made the decision to read Verity, I was really excited because I knew Hoover would deliver on a compelling beginning. But it wasn’t just the first chapter that was gripping. I read the whole thing in less than 24 hours and pretty much never put it down except to go to work. Say what you want about her romances, but Hoover is a compelling writer.

So what is Verity about might you ask? I skipped reading the synopsis on this one and honestly, I’d advise you to do the same. If you want a mind-bendy, slightly disturbing book with a killer twist, read no further and pick it up. If you need a bit more to go on, Verity is about ghost writer Lowen Ashleigh. She’s asked to author the 3 remaining books in an immensely popular thriller series because the original author, Verity Crawford, is no longer able to do so. To search for material on the rest of the series, she visits the author’s house to go through her office and strikes up a friendship with Verity’s husband, Jeremy. While there, she discovers a disturbing manuscript that makes her question everything she’s been told about Verity.

The setting reminded me a little of Ruth Ware’s, The Turn of the Key, while the plot and storytelling reminded me a lot of Alice Feeney’s, Sometimes I Lie. Lowen discovers a number of disturbing revelations about Verity’s past as creepy things start happening in the house that make her question her sanity. There’s a few random plot lines that don’t really seem to go anywhere, but they still add to the overall atmosphere of the book.

I’ve also said before that I’m not a big fan of the men Hoover writes as the love interests. This was the first Hoover book I read that focused less on the romance than the other aspects of the story though, so it was a welcome change. Emily May sums of my feelings about Hoover’s love interests well in her review where she notes, “I think I enjoy Hoover’s fucked-up books so much because I usually find her regular romances kinda fucked up. I like her books so much more when she’s writing about trauma and morally-questionable characters than when she’s trying to sell me a douche as a love interest.” Which brings me back to my original question – who decided to market this book as a romance? Everything about this book is “mystery/thriller” and someone needs to get this out of the romance genre so that more people pick it up.

Anyways, to sum it up, I really enjoyed it. The themes don’t have the same significance as some of her previous work, but it was still really fun to read and gripped me the entire time I was reading it.