Warning: its all in lower case bcuz im writing using my laptop.

so, i read verity by colleen hoover. 

i've never been too attracted to her books, idk why maybe its the cover, the hype or the blurb has never been convincing enough. 

anyway, after the thing with the zlibrary being taken down bcuz of her fans(you bet i read it for free online), i was curious especially bcuz a lot of people are coming forward now calling out the toxicity in her books, the poor writing and how its affecting the younger kids. many people are saying being fan of coho is almost like adults going through their wattpad phase where you mug every badly written bad boy book bcuz you find it sexy.

im not saying they are completely wong bcuz coho structures her male leads to be desirable, the irresistable species who are total assholes and abusive but still wants her audience to like them. she justified this by saying that her books do contain abusive, violent themes to bring attention to these problems but then another problem arises cuz she is advertising her romances as these cute stories that one expects to feel butterflies when they read it but instead its just the female lead having no personality and the male leads being complete jerks. and it would have been all okay if the genre was dark romance instead of just romance.

one youtuber described her books as, "they make twilight look good and maybe we were too harsh with edward's character." 

i mean, that says everything you need to know.

anyways, back to verity. i chose it simply bcuz its one of the 'less' talked about books on my booktok fy page. and its a thriller. i love a good thriller.

spoilers ahead, beware!

the book starts with introducing the mc, Lowen who is an introverted, slightly agoraphobic, having low self esteem writer who isnt much successful bcuz shes not good with media and fan interactions. its her first time getting out of her apartments after her mother died of cancer and the day isnt going well for her since while crossing the street a man gets brutally killed by a truck and his blood drenches her.

it sets tone for the rest of the book, like foreshadowing a tragedy that is inevitable. this is also where she meets the male lead, Jeremy, who gives her his shirt. they seem to bond over the bizarre incidence and the grief they carry over the deaths in their lives despite how different it is for them both.

turns out jeremy is Verity's husband. she is a famous author of a 9 volume suspense series but the last 3 books are incomplete bcuz she got in an accident and she's bedridden and hence cant complete them. verity's agent and jeremy pick lowen to complete her series by being the co author of the book and lowen of course accepts.

jeremy invites lowen to his house so she can go through verity's notes to better understand how the books should turn out. up until this point it is important to note that lowen hasn't read any of verity's books despite being a suspense writer herself and how famous verity is. on her way to vermont from manhattan, she listens to the audio book and is intimidated by her bcuz how good she is writing from the villain's pov. its like the begining of her animosity towards verity.

now the tragedy surrounding verity and jeremy is that they lose their twin daughters in a span of months and then verity gets into an accident, so now its just jeremy and their 5 year old son crew. lowen's agent warns her saying how its sus that the accidents happened in less than a span of a years and she should be careful of jeremy. the seed of suspicion is planted but lowen is attracted to jeremy and he does nothing to show that he isnt equally attracted to her.

while looking through her office, she finds a manuscript which turns out to be verity's autobiography and this is where the story picks up as lowen starts to understand who verity was. 

in short, the manuscript describes verity as a psychopath or not, depending how you see it. she talks about her obsession with jeremy and how she wants to please him no matter what by giving him sexual favours and doing things she doesnt like very much. their relationship is very much surrounded around sex and verity is very concious of her body and when she gets pregnant with the twins she is more worried about keeping her body how it was before so that jeremy doesnt lose interest in her. she despises the girls bcuz jeremy seems to love the twins more than he loves her and she wants all the attention to herself.

after giving birth, a lot of the following events hint at her going through postpartum depression but she hides it so well, no one ever suspects.

lowen is understandably disgusted by her violent thoughts towards her daughters and her distaste grows but she declares her psychopath rather than thinking maybe she was forced into a pregnancy she didnt want and she might as well have been bcuz jeremy refuses to use protection and further down the book it is clear he likes her pregnant more and has a impregnating kink.

(that impregnating kink is how i first came across verity becuz i saw a booktok that literally was titled, 'if you like impregnation kink' and then a paragraph from the book.)

anyways so it is revealed that verity had nothing to with chastin, her daughter's death. she died bcuz of a peanut allergy but she blames harper(the other daughter) for it bcuz she once had a dream about harper killing chastin when they were just babies. this made verity show affection to chastin finally bcuz she felt like she didnt have much time and she'll care for harper later.

but chastin's death makes her blame harper so much that she kills her. its also bcuz she is missing jeremy and he no longer has sex with her and she thinks one child gone is as good as other gone as well but she is wrong. she loses jeremy completely and she thinks whats the point, i'll drive myself into a tree. thats how her manuscript ends.

lowen is deeply disturbed, more so when she sees verity moving but no one else sees it and label it as paranoia. but when things start to get out of hand, and they both start to worry for the safety of boy, crew, lowen makes jeremy read the last two chapters of her autobiography which explained harper's death. jeremy is so overcome that he confronts verity and forces her to move. when she tries to expalin everything, instead of listening to her, he chokes her but if he chokes her he'll be arrested and that means no father for crew but more importantly no sexy boo for lowen and so she helps him kill her in a way that would seem more natural. 

i think i skipped the part where lowen and jeremy have sex and bcuz he doesnt use protection and lowen is not on the pill either, she gets pregnant and after the buzz around verity's death lessens, they start living together. seven months later it is shown that they are cleaning the house since its up for sale and lowen finds a hidden letter by verity addressed to jeremy telling him that the manuscript wasnt real, it was her way to get into the mindset of a villain by villainising her daily life. 

it gets more shocking when we find out that jeremy had already read the manuscript before lowen showed it to him and he was the one who had attempted to murder verity by pushing her car into the tree. but she survived and faked that she couldnt move or comprehend anything bcuz he would try to kill her again, so she stayed put and started forming a plan to get away with her son so they would be safe. 

as it happens, lowen disposes the letter and vows to take it to her grave but she does wonder which version is the real one.

 now as much as this storyline is dope, there are a lot of problems with it. first and the biggest one being, coho wanted the readers to think of lowen and jeremy as the heroes and verity as the villain but she has also admitted that she was confused while writing it and she didnt decide beforehand who the villain is but she eventually wants the couple to win. i mean they could have won easily by taking it to the police but jeremy decides to kill her twice and you cant blame it on being overcome by intense rage upon knowing his wife killed their daughter.

the next is the blatant disrespect towards disabled people. lowen wasnt guilty at all pursuing jeremy, nor was he as he didnt make it a huge point, in fact, he wanted to hide he was cheating on verity and showed no remorse throwing his marriage away like that. it was disrespectful when lowen tried her best to make it known to verity that she was going to steal jeremy from her. it was like just being disabled is reason enough to let go of the relationship they had spent years building.

i kid you not but a jjk ff on ao3 got this better than a published author. 

sloppy writing, unfinished character arcs, ill structured sentences which did not create as much suspense as they could have. like she introduced a lot of things about all these characters in the book but they were so meaningless bcuz it was never mentioned again. it makes one question, why even mention it.

theres clear kink shaming, slut shaming by taking the madonna way when verity and lowen are compared. lowen is the good person bcuz she doesnt do casual sex and isnt into kinks while verity has had her fair share of hook ups and her first meeting with jeremy was all about looking for a hookup wearing a red dress, the cliche one. 

verity's manuscript hints at sexism and misogyny since the first chapter where she explains what a man's perspective looks like and its not a really good base to start to prove verity as a villain. its not well thought out and that is what coho really lacks and won't change her writing or perspective. 

the major thing is that nowhere through all this jeremy is shown as the villain which is good if we think about how we cant predict he is the one who kills her but theres not much substance to him except that he's a loving father but we never see how he might be the root of verity's various mental health issues. but it gets clear in the bonus chapter where he does come out as manipulative and he has isolated lowen and made her dependent on him and basically he replaced verity with lowen.

there also comes a point where crew talks about killing his pet turtle and its not talked about again but then he locks lowen's daughter out of the house showing his deep rooted issues with losing 3 people in such a short time. lowen is scared but jeremy brushes it away, he doesnt care. and then he murders one of verity's friends because he is paranoid and in lowen's head she knows he's dangerous and she should leave but she doesnt and that that. the end. its a last useless attempt at explaining lowen and jeremy's actions which doesnt work.

but if you are someone who can get past all the technicalities and the plotholes to read a quick thriller, i'd say its a good one. its gripping enough and an easy read but if you are expecting something more elaborate and dramatic, i'm afraid there isnt much drama in it. its a quick fix, doesnt make you  think as deep as it should.