Book Review: Verity

I have heard people rave about Verity for a while and since my book club of former students and I wanted to try a psychological thriller we chose it. It’s my second Colleen Hoover book and totally different from It Ends With Us, which I loved by the way. I have a lot of thoughts about this book, which I’ll talk about below and while I normally don’t post spoilers, I do need to talk about my opinion on the ending so I will put a spoiler warning at the bottom when I talk about it!

Verity follows narrator, Lowen, a writer. She is hired by the publishing company of popular author, Verity Crawford. Verity was in a car accident and has been in a catatonic state for months so her publishing company and husband had the idea to hire another writer to continue and finish her book series.

In order to work on the books, Lowen needs to go to Verity’s house and go through all of her notes in her office. Jeremy, Verity’s husband, offers for Lowen to stay at the house while she goes through everything. Jeremy, who is very handsome by the way, takes care of his catatonic wife with the help of nurses. He also takes care of their young son. Jeremy and Verity tragically lost their twin daughters in separate accidents prior to Verity’s accident.

As Lowen goes through Verity’s books and notes and becomes closer with Jeremy, she discovers a manuscript written by Verity labeled as an autobiography. The manuscript is extremely disturbing and details how she met Jeremy all the way to becoming pregnant, starting her career, and the deaths of her daughters. I won’t say details of what Verity wrote, but it was so crazy. It was so disturbing that it certain parts actually made me so uncomfortable.

While reading it, I would get to the crazy parts and think “This book is not for me”, but after I finished reading it I realized it is so well written that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And actually because of the way it ends I couldn’t stop talking about it with other people I know who read it!

There are two opinions on the end of the book so if you’ve read the book before I’d love to know your thoughts!If you haven’t read it yet and you’re a fan of psychological thrillers then you should give it a shot, but be warned that there are definitely disturbing aspects to the storyline!

Now keep reading if you want my opinion on the ending!

SPOILER ALERT

There are two opinions on the end of the novel. As mentioned above, Lowen found Verity’s manuscript, but at the very end she finds a letter written by Verity under the floorboards. The letter says that the manuscript was all a lie and she never did any of those horrible things. In the letter she claims that the manuscript was all a writing exercise called antagonistic journaling where she basically writes the opposite of what she did/would do and felt.

Some people are Team Manuscript, meaning they believe the manuscript and that Verity really did those things. Some people are Team Letter and believe that Verity was innocent and never did those disturbing things.

I am Team Manuscript all the way and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I’m right. I think Verity is so crazy and the letter was one final way for her to manipulate Jeremy and Lowen. She knew that if they found the letter they’d feel guilty for what they did and it would drive them crazy to think that she may have been innocent the whole time so they’d never truly be happy together. I think she knew that it was over for her and Jeremy was moving on so she wrote the letter as a last ditch effort to ruin their lives. I just don’t think anyone would write all of those things and label it as an “autobiography” and then say “oh it was just a writing exercise”. I don’t buy it. I also think it takes a certain kind of psychopath to pretend to be catatonic for months!

So yeah, I’m Team Manuscript. I’d love to know your thoughts!

END SPOILERS

If you haven’t read the book, but plan to read it I’d love it if you came back to this post to let me know your opinion on the ending!

*This post contains affiliate links.*