{"id":11453,"date":"2026-10-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=11453"},"modified":"2026-10-03T22:40:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:40:44","slug":"verity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/04\/verity\/","title":{"rendered":"Verity."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Verity<\/a><\/em> might be the worst novel I\u2019ve ever read. If it\u2019s not, I am unable to remember one that was worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just that it\u2019s the book I disliked the most, although that\u2019s probably also true. I hated Moby Dick<\/em> and Naked Lunch<\/em>. Those books were unpleasant to read, the latter because it seemed to be pointlessly provocative and the former because I don\u2019t care about whales, but they still have literary merit beyond their stories or the authors\u2019 language choices. Verity<\/em>, which is by Colleen Hoover, is completely devoid of literary merit. It is barely a novel. It is a novel-like substance. It is novel-shaped. It\u2019s about 300 pages of absolute dreck, and the only good thing I can say about it is that it was over fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot, such as it is, might have made for a good potboiler in the hands of a better writer. Lowen is a struggling writer who\u2019s about to be evicted from her apartment when her literary agent (who was briefly her lover as well) calls her in for a secretive meeting. En route to that meeting \u2013 and here\u2019s where the book opens \u2013 she witnesses a pedestrian walk into the path of an oncoming bus and get his head smashed like a watermelon on stage with Gallagher, covering her with blood and, one would presume, some of ze little grey cells. A handsome stranger helps steer her into a coffee-shop bathroom and even gives her the shirt off his back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, the handsome stranger, Jeremy, is also going to that meeting. His wife, Verity, was a successful novelist, but she\u2019s unable to continue writing after an accident has left her catatonic. He wants Lowen to finish the series Verity had begun. Oh, did I mention that Jeremy and Verity lost both of their twin daughters, about six months apart, to strange accidents? Verity needs the cash, so she accepts the offer and heads to Jeremy and Verity\u2019s house in Vermont to go through Verity\u2019s papers, looking for notes and outlines. She instead finds a manuscript that seems to be Verity\u2019s autobiography, in which she reveals herself to be something akin to Mommie Dearest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It gets dumber from there, right down to the cowardly resolution, where Hoover essentially refuses to pick any side at all. Besides the thin plot \u2013 which, again, could have been something \u2013 these three main characters all suck. Jeremy is about as three-dimensional as the parchment paper I use to bake cookies. He\u2019s handsome and considerate and grief-stricken in that brooding way, and also, he really doesn\u2019t seem to have much compunction about flirting with Lowen while his non-responsive but definitely alive wife is upstairs. Lowen makes the wrong choice at nearly every turn, for no apparent reason other than plot convenience, as she is definitely not stupid, and she\u2019s not that na\u00efve, either. Like any author of a mediocre horror story, Hoover needs her characters to do dumb things, so they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n