Verity by Colleen Hoover
Grade: A
In Verity, struggling author Lowen is hired to write the final books of a popular series by the successful novelist Verity Crawford. Verity’s life has been destroyed by personal tragedies, including the deaths of two of her children, followed by a car accident that has left her in a persistent vegetative state, unable to do anything for herself, let alone write. Verity’s husband Jeremy allows Lowen to live in his family’s house while she sorts through the chaos of Verity’s office, hunting for notes and outlines to base the new books on. What she finds is an unpublished autobiography in which Verity admits to awful things. As Lowen starts to fall for Jeremy, she has to decide whether or not to give him the autobiography and expose him to the truth about the wife he so loyally cares for.
Speaking strictly in terms of what the book is trying to accomplish, it’s excellent, but its nature is very dark. Excepting one Joyce Carol Oates novel that I wish I hadn’t encountered, I’ve never read a book more graphic in terms of sex and violence, including violence against children. Just to give you an idea of what to expect, the very first line of the book describes an accident so gruesome that the main character gets covered in blood. There are also explicit sex scenes throughout. I don’t particularly care for sex scenes in romance novels, but in this setting they work well and [tiny bit of a spoiler] set up a hysterical joke for later.
I give Verity an A, because it’s a riveting whirlwind of a thriller, though it’s too dark for me to want to keep or read again.