Verity

The setup

Verity is a psychological thriller by Colleen Hoover, first self-published in 2018 and later released by a major publisher. It is a departure from her romance novels. It mixes a slow-burn love story with a dark mystery about a family that has lost two children. The title means "truth," and the whole book turns on one question: which version of the truth should the reader believe?

The narrator is Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer in New York. Her mother has just died after a long illness, and Lowen has spent months caring for her. She is broke and close to eviction. On her way to a meeting with a publisher, she sees a man hit and killed by a truck in the street. A stranger helps her clean the blood off her clothes and gives her his shirt.

The stranger turns out to be Jeremy Crawford, the husband of Verity Crawford, a bestselling author of a series of thrillers. Verity has been badly injured in a car crash and can no longer write. The publisher, Pantem Press, wants someone to finish the remaining books in her series. Jeremy has seen Lowen's work and chooses her. The money is enough to change Lowen's life.

To do the job, Lowen must go through Verity's notes. She travels to the Crawford home in Vermont, a large, isolated house. Verity lives there now in a hospital bed, cared for by a nurse named April. She appears unable to move or speak. Jeremy lives in the house with their young son, Crew.

The family has suffered more than one tragedy. The Crawfords had twin daughters, Harper and Chastin. Both girls died within a short time of each other, before Verity's crash. Jeremy is grieving, gentle with Crew and exhausted. Lowen is drawn to him almost at once.

In Verity's cluttered office, Lowen finds a manuscript titled So Be It. It is an unpublished autobiography, written in Verity's voice. Lowen starts to read it. The novel then alternates between Lowen's narration and chapters of the manuscript.

The manuscript: So Be It

The manuscript is the darkest part of the book. Verity describes her love for Jeremy as total and possessive. She writes about their sex life in graphic detail. She describes becoming pregnant with twins and feeling only resentment, because she did not want to share Jeremy. She writes that she tried to end the pregnancy herself.

After the twins are born, she describes coldness toward them and jealousy of the love Jeremy gives them. She describes the girls in disturbing terms. She says she believed Harper was hiding something dark. Her account of Chastin's death makes her seem detached, or worse.

As Lowen reads on, the manuscript grows more horrifying. Each chapter makes Verity look more like a monster. Lowen begins to fear for Crew, and for herself.

At the same time, strange things happen in the house. Lowen thinks she sees Verity move when no one is looking. She thinks she sees her at the top of the stairs. Crew says things that hint his mother is more aware than she seems. Lowen also has a history of sleepwalking, and she wakes in places she does not remember going. She cannot be sure what is real and what is fear.

Meanwhile, Lowen and Jeremy begin an affair. Lowen tells herself that Verity is gone in all but body. She also knows that she is falling for a man whose wife lies upstairs.

Characters

• Lowen Ashleigh: the narrator. A shy, anxious writer who prefers to stay out of public view. She is also a person who invents stories for a living, which matters at the end. Her sleepwalking makes her an unreliable witness even to herself.
• Jeremy Crawford: Verity's husband. Warm, grieving and devoted to Crew. He appears to be the good man at the center of a tragedy. The ending asks whether that is true.
• Verity Crawford: the bestselling author. In her manuscript she is a cold, manipulative mother. In the house she is a silent figure in a bed. The reader never hears her speak directly in the present, which makes her a blank screen for fear.
• Crew: the Crawfords' young son. He is the only child left, and his safety drives much of the tension.
• April: the nurse who cares for Verity. She is a minor figure, but her routines shape what Lowen can and cannot see.

Themes

Truth and authorship. Every important version of the story in Verity is written by an author: Verity's manuscript and Lowen's own narration. Each writer has reasons to shape the story. The book asks how much we can trust anyone who tells a story for a living.

Unreliable narrators. Lowen sleepwalks, wants Jeremy and needs the job. Verity's manuscript may be a confession or a writing exercise. Hoover gives the reader no neutral witness.

Motherhood and obsession. The manuscript shows a mother who resents her children for taking her husband's love. It plays on one of the strongest taboos in fiction: a mother who may harm her own children.

Grief. The Crawford house is full of loss. Jeremy has lost two daughters and, in effect, his wife. Lowen has just lost her mother. Their bond grows out of shared grief, and the book suggests that grief makes people vulnerable to whatever story eases their pain.

Isolation. The house is remote, and Lowen has no friends nearby to test her fears against. Hoover uses the setting the way a gothic novel uses a mansion: the house itself seems to watch the characters.

Desire and guilt. Lowen's attraction to Jeremy colors how she reads the manuscript. She has every reason to want Verity to be the villain, because that would make her affair less wrong.

Spoilers: the ending

This section reveals the ending.

The manuscript's final chapters confess the worst. Verity writes that she deliberately tipped over a canoe so Harper would drown, and that she let it happen. She presents herself as responsible for her daughter's death.

Lowen then becomes certain that Verity is faking her condition. She tells Jeremy about the manuscript and gives it to him. He reads it. He goes to Verity's room and confronts her, and she reveals that she can move and speak. Jeremy kills her. Jeremy and Lowen then make the death look like a natural result of her injuries, and the authorities accept that account.

Months later, Lowen is pregnant with Jeremy's child. They plan to leave the house. While packing, Lowen finds a hidden letter that Verity wrote to Jeremy.

In the letter, Verity tells a completely different story. She says the manuscript was a writing exercise she calls antagonistic journaling, in which she wrote from the point of view of a villain to understand her characters. She says she loved her daughters and that the girls' deaths were tragic accidents. She claims that Jeremy read the manuscript, believed it, and turned on her, and that she faked her condition because she feared him and wanted to protect Crew.

Lowen destroys the letter. She does not tell Jeremy. She chooses to live with him and raise their child, without knowing for sure which version is true.

The debated ending

Readers split into camps over the final twist.

The manuscript is true. In this reading, Verity was a monster who harmed her children. The letter is her last act of manipulation, written to protect herself if anyone found the manuscript. Supporters point to the detail and intensity of the manuscript and to Verity's faking, which shows she was willing to deceive.

The letter is true. In this reading, Verity was a dark writer, not a killer. Jeremy murdered an innocent woman, and Lowen helped. Supporters point to Verity's career as a thriller author who writes from villains' perspectives, and to the fact that Lowen had strong reasons to believe the manuscript.

Neither is fully true. Some readers argue that both documents are performances by a writer, so the reader cannot know. This reading fits the book's focus on authors and on the title's meaning.

Lowen herself is part of the puzzle. She is a writer who admits she likes to shape stories, she wants Jeremy, and she sleepwalks. The reader sees everything through her eyes. Some readers note that she has as much reason as anyone to want the letter gone, since it would make her a partner in murder.

Hoover leaves the ending open on purpose. The question the reader takes away is not only who is lying, but why each reader chooses to believe one story over the other.

What the critics say

Some critics find the manuscript's sexual content and child-harm scenes gratuitous. Others find the plot implausible, especially Verity's long deception and the ease of the cover-up. Fans counter that the open ending is the point. The book spread on social media largely through debate about that ending.

Who should read it

Read it if you like dark, fast psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators and endings that start arguments. It contains graphic sex, violence against children and other disturbing content, so it does not suit readers who want to avoid those themes.