Book Review: Verity by Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover is ridiculously popular so I was expecting quite a lot from this book. But…
It had a good premise at the beginning. Our leading lady, Lowen, is approached by the good looking and wealthy Jeremy Crawford to complete the series of bestselling books written by his wife Verity. Lowen’s told Verity has been involved in a car accident and is, at the moment, too injured to write.
The book slips into Jane Eyre ripoff territory here. Lowen moves in with the Crawfords so she can wade through Verity’s computer and paper files for notes on the unwritten books and is soon charmed by Jeremy downstairs whilst Verity is being tended to by a nurse upstairs. (Jeremy’s ‘charm’ includes him choosing Lowen’s pen name which, in a book that is chock full of uncomfortable and inappropriate scenes, I found super controlling and creepy.)
Then, we move to the ridiculous when, instead of Lowen finding any notes on the last three books Verity was set to write, she [conveniently] finds a manuscript of Verity’s autobiography. The manuscript describes how Verity has deceived her family for years with murderous intent towards them all — except for Jeremy. Verity’s thoughts on Jeremy pretty much just revolve around sex. As Lowen reads chapter after chapter of Verity’s manic behaviour, she becomes sure that Verity is faking her post accident injuries and she (and Jeremy) are in danger.
I think the most surprising thing about this book was how badly the prose was written. As I said, Colleen Hoover is hugely popular (she even has a nickname of CoHo) and yet I would describe her writing as basic. I don’t constantly need flowery descriptive passages but a couple wouldn’t go astray. The romance lacked heart and the characters lacked chemistry. The plot was okay but pretty implausible most of the time. The characters’ inner thoughts were immature and unintelligent. The entire style *might* be more suited to new adult readers.
However, if you are too young be warned this is definitely not a clean romance. It’s full of how many times Verity has sex with Jeremy in endlessly boring graphic detail with the added bonus of endless profanity. I can’t even begin to explain how tedious these scenes became. Yes, yes, I know, it was supposed to show us that Verity was *evil* but… I could have gotten that point without having to read a blow by blow (hee) account of them performing oral sex during every chapter.
Really, for a renowned romance author, the romance is terrible. As I said, I wouldn’t call any of the Verity/Jeremy scenes romantic and the romance between Lowen/Jeremy was not much better. Their meet-cute alone was probably the grossest, most unromantic meet-cute I’ve ever read.
The thriller part was… predictable. I was waiting for the obligatory twist at the end and I guess, on a whole, it wasn’t a bad twist. The way it was presented, however? … One great big info dump. A convenient info dump at that. This ending was so badly written that it pretty much took any enjoyment of the twist away and made me just blink and think about the million better ways Hoover could have done the big reveal.
When thinking about my rating, I conceded I did read to the end and I did find I was *almost* enjoying the book on occasions. I’m pretty confused by all the five star ratings though (each to their own, I guess) and it definitely makes me hesitant to read any other titles by Hoover.
2 out of 5
PS I did think about giving the book 2 1/2 out of 5 but then shaved the 1/2 star back off because of the ridiculous names Hoover used – Lowen and Verity and Chastin and Crew and I can’t even…
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