Verity

by Colleen Hoover

[lessthelonely]

OK, I've been very much avoiding writing this review because I felt like, for the first time, I would have to write a review including spoilers, which is something I never do. However, I decided to stay true to myself and not spoil this book, so let's just go.

I want to start by saying that I had known of Colleen Hoover's popularity mainly through TikTok and Twitter - from the same place, I also knew about how people have been finding her work to be worse and worse. My own two cents on that situation is that I don't think it's fair to judge dated writing decisions, and close to 10 year old writing decisions are obviously going to bring you some cringy lines or even passages that you are baffled with when you think that they got past a publisher's team.

This book, though, which is pretty recent? Completely readable. There were some icks, though nothing as bad as I've been seeing on Twitter, mainly things like using "vibe" when you're close to 30 years old and some other moments that felt a little bit forced because Hoover wanted there to be a clear moment of "X and Y get closer".

I don't understand how this book could be labelled a Thriller. Let alone a Mystery, because the driving force of its plot doesn't even have what you could call an inciting incident - for all intents and purposes, Verity's plot happens out of a coincidence: our MC meets this dude and then finds out he's basically asking for her help. The book seller, though, is Verity's autobiography, which starts early in the book, but I felt like we spent a whole lot of time in characterization of characters that I didn't care about.

I would probably label this speculative? Actually, I'd call it an attempt, I guess.

But when the autobiography starts, I was a little bit more in it and was trying to know what the book's title character is all about. I was duly dissappointed to find out that my worst suspicions about this book were right. All I'm going to say is that I can see a conservative person reading this book and being absolutely terrified. And, at the same time, the book is always pointing to the fact that This is so shocking, don't you want to throw up? by the means of making the main character react just like that. On top of that, the already bland shock-value this book tries so hard to go for gets even more affected by how the book frames it: I could see, from the very beginning, a very clear reason as to why things were happening, but it didn't even get addressed!

It felt like Verity was being told: You have another option. But Verity didn't get said option, so she turned to what the book described as "heinous", I guess. The fact that I was only tense while reading this book because I wanted to be shocked by it says a lot. I also couldn't take a lot of the supposedly tense moments seriously. It's very clear this is a first attempt at a Thriller Mystery, because the most basic, braindead and incredibly dull elements are added to this, as if the "mystery" part of the plot isn't so fucking basic you'll know what will happen 50 pages in.

And the reason I'm annoyed at this is because this book is said to be shocking, but the only way I see this book shocking anybody is if it is a baby's first book in the genre. Honestly, what was the author thinking? Because the mystery takes the background until basically the end of the book - the main character and the love interest have to fuck first, you know? But then, in the end, it's time to do what didn't happen for a whole book AND end up disappointed by it, because, outside of the abandoned, bare-bones mystery, NOTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN IN THIS BOOK.

It's just the main character internally screaming that she wants out of the house, scenes with the love interest that often made me roll my eyes and the "creepy scenes" I already talked about. I would say the ending has three plot twists: the first one is just stupid, the second one is the only one that surprised me (and not in a good way), the third one just proved my suspicions right.

I will try a romance book by Hoover at some point, but this left a sour taste in my mouth. Incredibly easy to read if you decide to power through it like I did.

Finally: I saw a review calling this book atmospheric on here... I'm sorry, what? I would like to stress the writing is passable and a light read (think: adjectives and basic descriptions) but in no way did this book draw me in beyond me wanting to see what the fuck it was about.