As someone who enjoys reading romance novels, especially ones that give me a thrill, I recently read Colleen Hoover’s Verity. This book is known as one of Colleen Hoover’s “best works,” although it diverges from her usual style.
From the first page, it was clear to me that Hoover’s writing style is quite simple–no extraordinarily elaborate sentence structures or word choices. Thus, it does not scratch my nerdy brain in all the right places—boring.
As to the characters, they were—for lack of a better word—cringy. As Lowen’s and Jeremy’s attraction for each other increased, I found myself wondering: what does Jeremy see in her? Lowen’s only personality traits are that she sleepwalks, and snoops around her employer’s family secrets. I believe that Hoover wasted a lot of opportunities to make Lowen a more engaging and deep character.
The plot. Frankly, the only plot twist I didn’t see coming was the one introduced in the last twenty pages or so. This gave the novel an outright laughable air. When something “creepy” happened, the only reaction I could muster up was, “Ugh, not this again” or, “Finally. I was wondering when this would happen.” Although the execution was mediocre at best, the idea was there—I will give Hoover that.
Throughout the story, I kept thinking: “This is a ⅗ star book—could be better.” At the very end, with the introduction of the open-ended plot twist, my rating went up to a 3.5/5. Overall, is this the worst book I’ve ever read? Definitely not. Would I recommend it to others? Perhaps—if you enjoy cheesy romances that don’t hold together logically, and deranged wives that have strange thought processes and missions of their own. So, read it…or don’t.
