NetGalley Top Reviewer

NetGalley Top Reviewer
NetGalley Top Reviewer

Monday, August 29, 2022

Verity by Colleen Hoover

 Fast, dark, disturbing and totally fun thriller.

Are you in a reading slump or just looking for something different in the suspense genre? If you're thinking about this one, just start it already. Don't read anything about it ahead of time so the shocks and twists will surprise you.

I'm not a romance reader and I really don't like graphic sex scenes so I was a bit hesitant about this book though I had heard it was a one-off speculative novel by this author. I know I'm late to the party, but I am so glad I picked it up. I started reading it last evening and had to basically put my life on pause while I devoured it over a couple of hours. It's got some gothic vibes with the gated mansion, handsome husband, and incapacitated wife upstairs.

The premise -- an introverted struggling author gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is offered a peach of a contract: finish the last 3 novels of a popular series written by Verity Crawford. The poor woman is unable to write them and her publisher thinks that Lowen might be able to pull it off. Since she's basically homeless and broke, Lowen accepts and travels to the Crawford home to examine notes and drafts of the proposed books. The house is lovely but the people inside are broken. Too much tragedy and sadness. The setting is ripe for drama and Lowen gets drawn in quickly, especially after discovering an autobiography hidden away in Verity's office.

A review of a book like this is hard to write without giving anything away. I could not help but enjoy it though I had to do a lot of skimming as I'm not a fan of detailed sex scenes. The characters were all deeply flawed and everything was creepy messy. I liked the writing style and the way the narrative was framed around the autobiography manuscript.

I have no idea how I happened to have this book on my Kindle, but I'm super glad I did.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.

Genre - suspense thriller, dark, disturbing, lots of sex scenes

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