Two star review, originally posted here on January 24th, 2025.
There are few current authors who seem more divisive than Colleen Hoover. I often see her name muttered in the same breath as Sarah J. Maas in either one of two contexts:
1. Best writer ever
2. Worst writer ever
And this “Verity” book appeared everywhere I turned when it came out. The world was slurping it up, and I saw this cover everywhere. So recently I figured, okay, let’s finally see what all the fuss is about. Would I get sucked in and become borderline obsessed like I did last year with the mindless brain candy ACOTAR? Or would I be throwing this book across the room and screaming to anyone who would listen about how this is complete garbage and anyone who reads it is a moron?
The answer is, well… neither?
This book is a big ol’ nothing burger. I comprehend neither the fervorous praise, nor vitriol it elicits in other readers. It’s dumb but fine. My best guess for the people who really hate it is not so much a hatred of the book, as a hatred of the praise others heap on it when so many other books are more deserving. For the people who super love it, well… I dunno. I really don’t.
What did I like? The meet-cute at the very beginning was kinda great. Like the beginning of every great rom-com, our main characters meet when one of them gets something spilled on herself and the cute guy next to her offers his shirt as an alternative, resulting in them getting shirtless in a public restroom together! So cute! So cliche! Except in this case the “something” she “spilled” on herself was a a bunch of someone stranger’s blood that splashed all over her in a NYC street corner like a combo of Carrie in the opening credits of Sex and the City, and Carrie in, well… Carrie. So that was a fun start! After that, things get kinda whatever.
What did I NOT like… This is very much a personal preference of mine and thus not the fault of the book itself, but I tend to HATE books and movies about authors in most cases. I think they are lazy storytelling. Well this dang book is about not one, but TWO authors! Gah! We flip between two points of view, meaning one point of view of each of the authors. There is no relief from this self-indulgent bullshit. What makes it even worse, though, is that one of the authors is lauded as being “really good.” Here’s the problem; a lackluster writer cannot impersonate a stellar writer. If they could, they would not be a lackluster writer. Hoover is a lackluster writer, and so all of the storytelling from the “really good” author’s point of view rings hollow.
What else did I NOT like? This book used another one of my least-favorite bits of lazy storytelling: We end with a looooooong-ass “letter” from one character that explains everything. Except that letter is not written like any sort of natural letter. It’s overly-long (especially when we find out how little time the author had to compose it), it’s overly-detailed, it’s weirdly impersonal, and it just so happens to coincidentally address and resolve every single detail that the character discovering/reading the letter needed answered. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? Totally hate-worthy. Except… this is the EXACT SAME thing that happens in Shadows of the Wind, which literary snobs all fucking LOOOOOVE the shit out of for some ungodly reason. Everyone’s cool when some pretentious sexist Spanish dickwad does it, but not cool when a left-publisher-turned-Booktok-hero does it? This don’t make no sense.
Otherwise, this book is pretty neutral. The story is dumb but ok enough. It reminded me of all the other chick-thrillers I’ve ready over the last decade or two (Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, etc.) I saw the casting for an upcoming movie version and this could make an ok movie. We suffer from an idiotic and unsufferable protagonist, but that’s also common enough.
So bottom line… a mostly meh book, but not that much more meh that all the other mindless shit out there. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it was good mindless entertainment to have on my headphones during long runs.
Helga without the H 