Verity (Paperback) By Colleen Hoover

Genre: Suspense

Publisher: Hoover Inc

ISBN: 9781791392796

332 pages

Source: Amazon

The Writing World is pretty brutal unless you’re J K Rowling or Steven King. Something Lowen Ashleigh knows all too well. She has been eeking by with some under the radar suspense novels but they’re hardly paying her bills.

After witnessing a horrific New York City car crash, she is rescued by a random dude who then, just happens to be part of a major meeting, just after the catastrophe. As Lowen walks into the meeting, she realizes that her knight in shining armor is the husband of one of the all-time greats, Verity Crawford.

Jeremy Crawford and Lowen’s publishing team have called the meeting to request Lowen’s “collaborative” skils on the rest of Verity’s best selling series. It turns out, Verity hasn’t recovered as well from a recent car crash as the media has portrayed. Lowen would essentially be taking over the series.

Deal of a lifetime, right? Well…

Part of the deal is that Lowen will pack up and head out of the city, living with Jeremy and his one remaining kiddo. She’ll live with the family (including a comatose Verity) in the country, soaking up Verity’s past works, journals, and other bits and pieces so she can better get into the convalescing writer’s head.

The country house is huge but has a very Poe-like vibe to it. The Crawfords have been through immense tragedy, including losing their twin daughters within a very short time period, not long ago. The details around their deaths were somewhat suspicious but not too much for two eight-year-olds who, as a species, run into their fair share of calamities. One of the girls suffered a peanut allergy attack. Shortly after, the other twin died in a boating accident. Tragic but nothing too sinister.

The innocence of the family’s situation falls away when Lowen stumbles upon an unpublished manuscript written by Verity. The manuscript contains dark stuff. Like Tell-Tale Heart level of dark stuff. The thing is, Jeremy has no idea that his wife has been hiding sinister details of their life for the length of their relationship. Lowen keeps reading, unsure of whether to divulge the manuscript’s details to her current host. But that decision may be forced for her as their idyllic roommate situation begins to unravel, quickly.

Winding through a slow but somehow, at the same time frantic unfolding of events, Verity is a work of suspenseful genius. I’ve never been a huge thriller gal but I do love the classics (yes, like Poe, who I’ve now mentioned three times, so it must be real), and this one goes down in my own personal reading history as a soon to be classic. This was my first book by Hoover but now I’m off to find everything else she’s written. I guess some authors are beloved for a reason. And Colleen definitely has a reason to be as adored as she is.