Verity

Verity understands that the most dangerous person in a house may be the one who gets to write the account of what happened there.

Colleen Hoover makes a promise in this book and then keeps making me doubt the person who made it. I read quickly, which is exactly what the novel wants. Afterwards I was less certain I admired the machinery than I was while caught inside it. That is a legitimate thriller experience: the trap works, and you can still complain about the hinges.

I would shelve this beside domestic suspense, not with comforting love stories. The attraction is part of the unease. If a reader asks me whether Jeremy is a dream man, my answer is that the book is doing its job too well if you can settle that question at a glance. I was interested in who held the evidence, who interpreted it, and who benefited from being believed.

The premise (no spoilers past the discovered manuscript)

Lowen Ashleigh is a writer short of money when Jeremy Crawford offers her work completing a successful series begun by his injured wife, the bestselling novelist Verity Crawford. Lowen goes to the Crawford home to study Verity's notes and outlines. There she discovers an unfinished autobiography containing disturbing claims about the family's past. She keeps it from Jeremy while her feelings for him deepen.

That is the publisher's early setup, and it is enough. The manuscript changes the temperature of every room without requiring me to repeat what it alleges. This is a book built around uncertainty about a document, so even a conscientious plot summary can do damage.

What works

The central device is blunt and effective: one writer reads another writer's hidden account, then has to decide whether to treat it as confession, performance, or something still less trustworthy. Hoover does not need a large cast or a complicated map. She lets a page on a desk poison the air in a house. The physical act of reading becomes suspenseful because Lowen is both investigator and potential beneficiary of what she finds.

That conflict gives the book its most interesting pressure. Lowen needs the job; Jeremy needs help with Verity's work; Verity, though injured, remains the author whose voice dominates the space. Everyone has a reason to want one interpretation to win. The book keeps asking a nasty question: when an account confirms your desire, how hard do you check it? I could feel my own standards of proof becoming suspiciously flexible as I turned the pages. Rude of Hoover to involve me.

The prose is functional in the best thriller sense. Short chapters and abrupt new information keep the reading pace high. Hoover understands how to end a section when the reader has just enough certainty to feel secure, then remove it. The manuscript material supplies a second voice and a more intimate source of threat than a stranger at the door. The tension comes from interpretation as much as from danger.

I also like that the romantic pull is contaminated from the start by the circumstances. Jeremy is not an available stranger in a clean situation. He is Verity's husband, a grieving father, and the person who hired Lowen. The attraction therefore raises questions about judgement rather than giving the reader a holiday from them. Every tender possibility has a rather ugly receipt attached.

What's polarising

The book treats extreme material as propulsion. Child death, child abuse, and disturbing family violence are not details to be waved away as atmosphere. Some readers will find the escalation gripping; others will feel the subject matter is pushed into service of one more turn of the screw. I am somewhere between. I admire the force of the structure and wish certain shocks had been given a little more human weight before the next demand for my attention.

There is a similar split in the prose. Its plainness clears a path for momentum, but it rarely invites me to pause over a sentence. If you want psychological depth to accumulate through nuance and contradiction, you may feel the novel prefers a stronger jolt. Hoover can make you turn a page at speed. She is less interested here in letting you live quietly with a complicated thought for very long.

The romance will divide readers who arrive from her love stories. There is explicit attraction, but the book does not make it safe, and I would distrust a recommendation that sold Jeremy as an uncomplicated reward. The pleasure of Verity lies in wondering how much of what you want is affecting what you believe. That is delicious on paper and a poor basis for choosing a partner.

The Jeremy of it

Jeremy is the hinge between Lowen's practical assignment and the family's private history. His need for help gives her a reason to be present; his closeness gives her reasons to stay. That dual role makes him compelling, but it also means every judgement about him is entangled with what Lowen wants from the situation. Hoover uses the entanglement more effectively than any surface description of his appeal.

I kept asking whether his apparent steadiness was character or simply contrast. Set almost anyone beside the contents of that manuscript and they may look reassuring. The book's cleverness is that it knows how readily readers make that comparison. Jeremy is most interesting when I refuse to outsource my trust to his pain, even while understanding why Lowen might be tempted.

Spice and heat

Heat is 4 out of 5, explicit open door. The sexual content is substantial and belongs to an adult thriller, not a cosy romantic interlude. Content notes: child death, child abuse, family violence, grief, and disturbing sexual material. The book's atmosphere can be oppressive. Readers who are sensitive to harm involving children should know that before opening it, rather than discovering it as a supposed surprise.

Who it's for

Read Verity if you like a swift, nasty argument about whether a written confession deserves your trust. You should be comfortable with sexual content mixed into psychological threat and with a cast whose motives resist easy sorting. I would give it to the friend who likes to close a book and immediately convene a hearing at the kitchen table. Bring evidence. Also biscuits.

Leave it if you need your thriller to treat every dark subject with restraint, or your romantic interest to provide a clean moral centre. Hoover is aiming for compulsive doubt. She hits it, sometimes with a sledgehammer.

Books like Verity

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, for a house ruled by an absent woman's story and a marriage shadowed by uncertainty.
• None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell, for another account that makes the listener question how much the teller controls the truth.
• The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark, for a less obvious novel about a writer hired to shape a dangerous family history.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Jeremy Crawford is waiting on Fictora.

Talk to Jeremy Crawford