“Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer, is hired to complete the unfinished series of injured bestseller Verity Crawford. In the Crawford house she finds Verity's autobiographical manuscript.”
Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Verity is Colleen Hoover's 2018 psychological thriller, originally a quiet release that broke out years later when BookTok rediscovered it in 2021 and pushed it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for the next two years. Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer in Manhattan, is hired by Jeremy Crawford to ghost-write the final three volumes of the bestselling crime fiction series that Jeremy's wife Verity has been unable to finish since the car accident that left her in a vegetative state. Lowen moves into the Crawford family home in Vermont to research Verity's notes and finds, in a desk drawer, what appears to be Verity's autobiographical manuscript. The manuscript is what Verity actually thought about her marriage, her children, and the two daughters who died.
Hoover's structural device is the embedded manuscript: chapters of the novel alternate between Lowen's increasingly compromised present-tense narration and Verity's first-person manuscript prose. The Verity manuscript chapters are the literary engine of the book; Hoover writes them with a tonal viciousness that is genuinely uncomfortable. The reliability question the novel poses in the back-third (is Verity's manuscript what she actually believed, or is it the kind of fictional confessional a thriller writer might leave around the house) is the structural payoff and the part that fueled the BookTok discourse for years. The romance plot between Lowen and Jeremy is the genre concession Hoover makes to her core audience, and it is the weakest part of the book.
Recommended for thriller readers, for the contemporary domestic-thriller core audience, and as the Hoover novel to read if you want to know what the BookTok discourse was actually about. Compare to Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), Behind Closed Doors (B. A. Paris), and The Silent Patient (Alex Michaelides). The Vanessa Johansson / Amy Landon audiobook is the definitive audio production. Four solid stars.
Related reads
If you liked Verity
It Ends with Us
by Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover at her most daring. A romance that refuses to be comfortable, and is more powerful for it.
The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides 2019 review. A forensic psychotherapist works with an artist who has not spoken since the night she shot her husband. The thriller debut that topped the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and became the most-discussed contemporary psychological thriller of its decade.
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
The Secret History by Donna Tartt 1992 review. A new student at a Vermont college is drawn into an exclusive Greek-studies seminar and the murder that the small clique conceals. The novel that defined the dark-academia register before it had a name.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
Along Came a Spider
by James Patterson
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson 1993 review. Alex Cross, a Washington D. C. detective and psychologist, hunts a kidnapper who has taken two children from an elite Georgetown school. The first Alex Cross novel and the entry point to the highest-selling American thriller series of its generation.
Fourth Wing
by Rebecca Yarros
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 2023 review. Violet Sorrengail, a fragile scribe, is forced into the brutal dragon-riding war college. The first book of the Empyrean series and the romantasy novel that defined the 2023-2024 BookTok moment.
More by this author