Verity by Colleen Hoover

Verity
by Colleen Hoover 

Rating: 3.5 

Date Finished: 9/23/2026 

Genre: Thriller, Romance, Fiction 

Plot: 3.7
Characters: 3.5

Writing Style: 3.0

Setting: 4.5

Would Read Again? No. 

Would Recommend? Yes. 

Summary: 
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.

Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.

Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.

Review: 

First of all, Verity IS terrifying. After reading this book, I've come across an interview that Colleen Hoover had about it, she said that she wrote this book in the point-of-view of Lowen, and as the book comes to an end, she finds herself confused about how to think of Verity and Jeremy, and what exactly were the truth. So, looking at Lowen's point-of-view, Verity would terrify me exactly the same way she terrified Lowen. With Verity's character being so unpredictable, I found it hard to find sympathy for her, exactly the same way Lowen were. Verity was paralyzed and physically immobile, but I couldn't stop looking behind my back throughout the whole book, to make sure she isn't standing behind me, furious that I was finding out about her secret. 

I personally liked the way Verity's character was written, up until the very end. She was a complicated character, and right off the bat, I was able to form an emotional connection with her. I personally like characters that show a little flaw here and there, I think it makes them human in some way. She was a mother who lost two of her children, and then lost herself from a tragic car accident. And honestly, I feel even worse knowing that her publisher did not respect her enough to let the series die, if by chance, with her. If, by some chance, Verity was to be paralyzed for the rest of her life, her work should go with her. I think that hiring Lowen to continue her series without her permission was another form of taking away her agency (which I will get about in a little bit.) Verity was a perfect example of a complicated woman, she had dreams, fears, ambitions, and a life, that, unfortunately, we will never know in a deeper level, and I think that's a great reflection of our relationships with other people. 

Jeremy, on the other hand, is a far more unlikeable character for me. Perhaps it is my own biases and relationships with men who are in complicated relationships. Somehow, my mind looked at Jeremy in a very suspicious light. What was it about Jeremy that drove Verity insane? As he said, he is one of the Chronics, a type of people that attracts tragedy. I always think that there is some kind of common denominator on things like this. If a person consistently attracts a specific kind of toxic relationships, there shall be a point in time where one must look within themselves and analyze the part of themselves that manages to find their way to those toxic relationships, it is the same with Jeremy. Losing two of his children, and then his wife having a car accident, then his son always in the brink of danger, and then whatever happened to Lowen a little further down the story; it just seems like Jeremy isn't this sad, little victim, perhaps, there is something about him that is as deeply disturbing as everything around him. How can one person attract this much darkness without some darkness already living within them? As I read through the book, my thoughts about Jeremy grew stronger. It wasn't until later on in the book. Jeremy, on the surface, looks like he is gentle, understanding, and kind; the type of man that hugs you when you needed him to, and that, perhaps, Lowen and Verity were right about the kind of man he was, BUT you would have to look a little closer. The first red flag was when he proposed the idea of locking Lowen from the outside, which is the same feature Verity had in her own room. Lowen knew she didn't like this, but blinded by the comfort and kindness shown and given to her by Jeremy, she agreed. I swear, that lock had a symbolism behind it. Let's say, for the good of it all, let's give Jeremy the benefit of the doubt: Lowen does sleepwalk, and she was terrified when she woke next to Verity, but how about Verity? In Jeremy's eyes, she was a paralyzed, immobile woman who cannot walk, talk, crawl, or even move her toes. What is the purpose of locking her from the outside? But alas, it was never about the lock, it was about control. There was a part where he questioned why Lowen needed a lock from the inside, thinking she was scared of him that's why she needed to lock the door from the inside. What if we reversed that? The reason he proposed to lock Lowen's room from the outside, the same as for his immobile wife, was because he wanted some form of control.

Another red flag was the two times he tried to manipulate what happened to both Verity and Patricia, to Lowen. He emphasized multiple times that he did not kill them, they died in an accidental matter to which he did not have any contribution or involvement, until the same words had completely penetrated Lowen's confused mind, and he managed to twist the reality inside her head. No, we didn't kill Verity, she died in her sleep. And No, I didn't drown Patricia, she drowned on her own. Until Lowen, herself, started questioning her own reality and what the truth was. If Jeremy have the capacity to twist Lowen's truth, a woman who had been to therapy, a woman who didn't have half of the trauma Verity had, what was stopping him from doing the same thing to Verity, a woman who just lost one of her daughters? What if he did that to her about Harper's death? Maybe, this theory was a little reach, but we know Jeremy have manipulative tendencies, and we know that Verity gave us two different possibilities of the truth, but at the same time, Verity is dead, and there is someone in the house who knows the truth and will die with it, and it is Jeremy. 

I honestly could go on and on about how Jeremy might be the mastermind behind everything. But, then, again, there's still the letter, and that letter really contradicts a lot of the opinions I am trying to build about the life Verity and Jeremy lived. But long theory short, here's what I would say: Jeremy was manipulative. At some point of their relationship, in some degree, he had twisted Verity's reality into something she couldn't recognize herself, and she became extremely dependent on him to be provided of the truth, of what was and what wasn't. Verity was a confident woman, she knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. Why would a woman with this charisma and self-esteem be fully dependent on someone else for reassurance and existence? 

And at the end of the story, Lowen, a woman who have a well-built survival instinct, enough to take care of her mother and not fall for her mother's manipulation, enough to recognize an unhealthy relationship with Corey and proceeded to decide to leave, enough to know initially that she could not be with a married man, started thinking of herself as an otherwise liability to Jeremy's life if she was no longer useful? Why would a woman who always thought highly of children, start thinking Crew is a danger to her and her family? You can see how Lowen's personality and behavior morphed to what Verity was in her manuscript: insecure, fragile, doubtful, and scared. The same with Verity as she described in her manuscripts, Lowen started being scared of being seen as useless and undesirable, that she was willing to bend her morals in fear of either losing Jeremy or having to see him retaliate, after all, she did see him murder two women when he didn't get his way. 

I've also seen a lot of discussion about which truth was the actual truth, the manuscript or the letter, and my answer is both. The letter didn't deny the fact that those events did happen, the deaths, the car accidents, etcetera, it just told the internal dialogue Verity had during those events. And the letter explained the external circumstances that were outside of Verity's internal dialogue: Jeremy's anger, how her daughters die, what happened to Crew. It was all the same, they were all true, just in a different point-of-views. The manuscript focused more on the chaos Verity was experiencing internally, how she deemed herself, Jeremy, her experiences with postpartum depression and psychosis, and the letter explained the things she saw outside of herself. I do believe she was experiencing postpartum depression and psychosis, only because Verity never wanted children, and she didn't have the confidence she initially had in herself to hold that conversation with Jeremy, and given the fact that she was raised religious by her religious parents, I would assume she had felt the pressure on all sides to have children, even when she truly didn't want to. Yet, I do believe Verity loved her twin daughters. Two truths can coexist at the same time, and we can see it with Lowen at the end of the book; she was struggling between holding Jeremy accountable for the violence he was showing, and letting him do it for the sake of her love for him and his children. I could argue that Verity was experiencing the same thing, the internal battle between loving her children, and watching the life she wanted for herself crash and burn. 

So, yes, Verity did some despicable things. Maybe she truly believed her twin daughters didn't deserve the life they got, maybe in her worst days, she believed the sick thoughts she had of herself and her family. But at the same time, I think Jeremy had a hand in dismantling the healthy, logical reality Verity had, the same way he did with Lowen. I believe Jeremy had a way into bending these women in ways he desire them to bend, and when they are no longer a good investment of his energy, when they become a liability, they face the same fate as of a chronic: a dark, tragic life. 

It's a good book, don't get me wrong. But I feel like there are sides we didn't get to see, after all, this was written in Lowen's point-of-view.