VERITY (2021)
By Colleen Hoover
GCP Hachette Group, 314 pages.
★
Verity is the sort of book you rip through but feel guilty for liking. My conscience is clear. I hated it! It’s what you might come up with if you pulped Jane Eyre in your blender with some trashy 21st century Harlequin romances and Fifty Shades of Grey. You could, though, amuse yourself by enumerating the number of contrivances and cliches that appear upon its pages.
An unknown writer, Lowen Ashleigh, is called upon to “collaborate” with Verity Crawford, a hugely popular author. Like that would happen. The collaboration is a ruse as Verity lies in a vegetative state in the Vermont lakeside home she shares with her husband and their son Crew, their only surviving child. Their twin daughters died in separate accidents and Verity is probably brain dead from a car accident. Or, is she? What’s true and what’s not lies at the heart of the book.
Well... maybe that’s not right either. Much of the book is devoted to what appears to be an autobiography/confessional from Verity unearthed by Lowen. A lot of it consists of graphic descriptions of Verity’s sex life with Jeremy. She’s apparently quite adept at oral sex and Jeremy has such porn star endurance that Verity’s teeth marks are on the master bedroom headboard. Which, of course, is why a grieving father/husband would invite a stranger to use that space as a guestroom as she seeks out notes Verity might have left behind concerning the next three installments of her book series. Lowen—an unknown, I remind you—has a half million good reasons to do a good job. That’s her payout if she delivers Verity-like novels before the world discovers Verity is actually a potted plant.
Still another device: Lowen is a mess who has been evicted from her New York City apartment, lacks self-confidence, is a recluse, and spends her days imagining it is she who is enjoying Jeremy’s sweaty bod. Oh, and she’s a city girl in Vermont and during her time in the Crawford home is so out of place that she welcomes a trip to McDonald’s. (For the record, both Grubhub and DoorDash know where Vermont is located.)
During Lowen’s time in the Green Mountain State she never writes so much as a sticky note. She does, however, have either a very vivid imagination or something exceedingly creepy is happening in a McMansion that really ought to have a few Queen Anne turrets, preferably one or two scorched by lightening bolts. Lowen has a history of sleepwalking because, of course, she does. She is sure, though, that she has seen Verity out of her bed staring at her, once with a knife. Lowen is also sure that Verity offed one of the twins.
I’ll bet you know what happens between Lowen and Jeremy. Was this book approved by the American Dental Association? Are headboards particularly good for incisors? Maybe. Seems to work for beavers.
The novel’s central mystery hinges on whether what we read is what happened or merely a novelist’s exercise called antagonistic journaling. Everything is revealed in a from-the-grave letter. If you’re curious, you could easily skip the entire book and head for that last chapter. Short of recycling, I’d recommend that.
Hoover’s style practically begs for descriptors such as histrionic, overwrought, implausible, and prosaic. The book blurbs tell us that Hoover is a New York Times #1 best-selling author. From this we can only deduce that New Yorkers aren’t nearly as sophisticated as they think they are.
I’ll give Verity credit for one thing, though; it has high camp value. But if it’s ever assigned in a literature class it is my fervent hope that the professor is denied tenure.
Rob Weir
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