Author: Colleen Hoover
# of Pages: 333 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Thriller, Mystery
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.
Review: Brava, Colleen Hoover, for writing a book in completely different style and genre than I was expecting. I firmly bucketed her as a romance author, but I’m happily proven wrong.
Although there are romance elements, I actually don’t consider Verity to be a romance at all because it’s overpowered by the thriller (and mystery) qualities. It took me a while to sort out my actual thoughts on this book while recovering from the dread/fear I felt while reading.
Verity had plenty of flaws that almost made me rate this 3 stars instead of 4.
- There’s POV switching in the form of switching between two mediums: Lowell’s (the main character) narration and Verity’s manuscript. Both are in first person, but I actually wasn’t as bothered by this as I usually am. However, it did weaken the story’s grip on my attention because there were times where Lowell’s chapters felt like filler.
- This is yet another case where an author creates a main character who is ALSO an author or has writing related interest. In Verity, there's actually TWO author characters (Lowell and Verity). But I guess authors "write what they know".
- Hoover was VERY intentional with making this story a thriller. Verity is written to be ominously freaky, and Lowell is the classic jumpy main character whose paranoia is contagious. If this was Hoover’s goal, mission accomplished. That being said, it felt like some cheap ways to make a story creepy in ways that weren’t plot relevant. But I’m not a huge thriller fan, so I can imagine others might love this aspect.
- Without spoiling it, the ending felt rushed, and the extended epilogue was unnecessary or should have been incorporated in the rest of the story. The ending was also divisive (which I liked), but to make it truly defendable, I wish Hoover made sure there was continuity in her story when looking at it from the most common angles.
But in the end I felt this book earned a low-4 stars:
- This book flowed really well; I read it in a day and couldn’t put it down (but maybe this is because I was too scared?)
- While the beginning felt like a cliche romance (meetcute in the very first chapter really fit with Hoover’s style), the rest of the story was actually not recognizable to me as Hoover’s style at all. I applaud the writing diversity and thought she pulled it off really well without being overly reliant on incorporating romance elements.
- I like books that make the reader at the end want to go back and overanalyze the story, and this book fits the bill. I couldn’t get this book out of my head and found myself scrolling through fan theories to hear other people’s interpretation of the story.
- There’s a lot of nuance in the characters; even one’s that are meant to be “villainous” are still realistic and have some admirable qualities (love to hate them).
- I would actually recommend this book to people, especially since it’s such a quick and gripping read.
No comments:
Post a Comment