My friend, Frances, and someone online had said "this book will stick with you" and they weren't joking. I thought I was going to get a bit of suspense, a little drama and maybe a twist or two. But no, Colleen Hoover had other plans. That book came with intensity I didn't see coming
First Things First.... Colleen Hoover is Not Okay
How do you write something that disturbing and then go about your day like you didn't just ruin lives? That's what Verity felt like -quietly disturbing. Not in a jumpscare type of way but in a "wait, what am I even reading?" way
The story starts with Lowen, who's a struggling writer. She gets this once-in-a-lifetime chance to finish a popular book series for Verity Crawford, a well-known author who's now unwell. So Lowen moves into Verity's home to dig through her notes
It seems straightforward -until Lowen finds a hidden manuscript and that's where everything spirals
That Manuscript Was Something Else
Reading that manuscript felt like being let into someone's deepest, darkest thoughts -except those thoughts were just horrifying. Verity's voice in the manuscript was so cold and casual, it made the awful things she confessed even harder to read. I kept pausing after certain pages just to process
The manuscript wasn't part of the book series Verity had been writing. No -it was something else entirely. A sort of autobiography. And it was.... vile
Verity confesses in it how she pretended to love one of her twin daughters less, just to manipulated her own husband, Jeremy. She talks about being jealous of her own kids, about how she viewed them as competition for Jeremy's attention
But it didn't stop there
Verity also wrote about when she was still pregnant with the twins. How she tried to use a hanger -just to kill them. She admitted she didn't want them. She didn't want to be a mother. And she resented them before they were even born
How do you read that and keep going like everything is okay?
Then came the part I can never unseen -when she admitted she was the one who killed one of the twin. Not by accident. Not in a fit of rage. But calmly, quietly, like it was a chore she needed to get done
She said she watched her daughter drown. That she let it happen. And she didn't feel bad about it
Like.... what?
The manuscript was evil. Not because of the writing style or whatever, but because it peeled back the mask of a mother and showed you the ugliest, coldest face underneath. It felt real. Too real
There were times I wasn't even sure what was real anymore. The whole things blurs the line between truth and fiction in a way that leaves you completely off balance
Let's Talk About Jeremy -Because, sir?
I know people had different takes on Jeremy, Verity's husband, but honestly? I didn't like him. You'd think the husband would be the innocent party, right? Something about his behaviour felt off. Like, yeah, he's been through a lot -losing two daughters, having a wife in a vegetative state, raising a son alone. But still....
He seemed to quick to move on with Lowen. It didn't sit right with me. Especially with everything going on in that house and the wife still being in the house, upstairs. The man didn't even hesitate
And when that final twist came -the letter- I was like, nope. That letter felt too convenient. Like a last minute attempt to clean everything up and paint a different picture. I didn't trust it one bit
It actually made me like Jeremy even less. Either he believed everything in that manuscript and still acted the way he did or he knew more than he let on. Either way, I wasn't buying his "good guy" act
The letter Verity supposedly wrote? It came out of nowhere and flipped the entire story on its head. In the letter, she claims the manuscript was just a writing exercise. A fiction piece. Something her editor encouraged her to do to practice writing from the POV of a villian
The letter completely contradicted everything in the manuscript. All that stuff about her being jealous of the twins, trying to kill them in the womb, actually killing one of them on purpose -it was all supposedly made up
She made herself look like a master.... for practice? Nah. I couldn't buy it
That manuscript was too detailed. It was raw and cold in a way that fiction doesn't usually hit. If it was just an exercise, why was it printed, hidden and tucked away in her secret drawer like it was something to be ashamed of?
The Book Stuck With Me
Even though I read it a while ago, I still think about Verity sometimes. The way it made me question every chapter, the tension, the uncertainty.... it all just left an impact
It wasn't written written in flowery or poetic way. It was direct, uncomfortable at times but impossible to put down. The suspense was real
Verity isn't your typical easy read. It's one of those books that makes you second guess everything. And even after finishing it, I'm still not entirely sure where I stand with some characters
Would I recommend it? Yes. Especially if you like stories that mess with your head a bit and leave you with more questions than answers
image is a screenshot from my e-library