Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Verity

Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

Verity by Colleen Hoover

8 reviews

lou_loo's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Honestly, I have to say the story was captivating, I read it in a day. This is the only positive point in this story.
I wouldn't call this a thriller, maybe a mediocre one... The characters are all horrible and twisted.

The memoir real or not, choose to believe what you want, (I'm completely sure it was real, CoHo even said it in an interview) was dark and horrible, I mean I understand that child abuse exists and it's important to talk about it to raise awareness and stop it, but don't use it for shock value in such a terrible book, and don't add pure smut scenes in between these horrifying moments...

Overall, badly written, and had bad characters and honestly the plot wasn't even scary or mysterious honestly we could get the outline of the plot twist easily from the first 25% of the book.
I would put trigger warnings on child abuse and murder/murderous thoughts along with useless shock-value gore...
And never recommend it to anyone.
It's the 3rd and last CoHo book I'm reading.

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michellebub's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

As someone who usually doesn’t read thrillers, I really did enjoy reading this one. I know CoHo gets criticized a lot but this one actually has a good plot. I think maybe CoHo should stick to thrillers and maybe part ways from the romance genre, her books just need more than just romance, for example it ends with us, it was good because it had that whole domestic violence thing going on. This book? It had the manuscript, the creepy verity and the sudden deaths of her two children. I never knew what she was going to do next, but I just had to find out, which why I practically ate this shit up. Read half of the book in one day even though I had to learn for my exam.
Anyway now you know how I feel about the book but I also want to talk about the important stuff.
Her writing. I felt like she did not really describe places or people so I couldn’t really imagine anything or anyone but Jeremy and I think the only thing I know about him is that he is attractive, oh and verity is skinny is something I just have to guess from her mindset about her body. The irony in this is that I also felt like CoHo sometimes talked about stuff that was unnecessary, for example the sex scenes, we get they had sex, I don’t need it described all the time. But the unnecessary stuff, apart from the sexual content, got better, either that or I stopped noticing because I only cared about the manuscript.
Overall, this book was like most of CoHo books, easy to read and get through, definitely a good book when your just getting started with thrillers.

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mard3ytv's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

It is a solid B book. It doesn’t deserve all the hype it gets. I don’t hate it, the plot twist be twisting! It was at least entertaining I guess and that’s all that matters.

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zoeelora's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

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taulkstoomuch's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This book had such potential to be an excellent novel on the struggles that women face, especially surrounding pregnancy. Not only were those problems not addressed, but the women were also villainised for resenting children that they did not want in the first place.

After seeing my visceral reaction to the awfulness of the book, my sister asked me if the book was actually good since it was able to get such a reaction out of me. I wondered about this for a while, maybe she had a point, but after thinking about it for a couple of days, I can say that she was wrong. It's not that the book was amazing bar one thing... it was awful bar one maybe. The plot was awful, as mentioned above; the ending felt like a cop-out.

All that disgusting description of all the things Verity can't be justified by it all being antagonistic writing. That doesn't make up for the fact that all that horrible stuff was written.

This was accompanied by not-so-good writing. How are 2 women so besotted by what seems like the most average man in the world, to the point where they are able and willing to commit actual crimes? There's no man in the world that is worth that, it has to be a joke.

I can't think for a second why someone would enjoy this book, let alone make it one of their favourites. If this is the case, I thoroughly recommend some sort of psychiatric help, even if it is for reassurance purposes. If you are considering reading this book, I suggest you heed the instructions written in Colleen Hoover's acknowledgements to her husband and 'don't' :)

Anything I have missed is more eloquently and passionately said by Cindy (withcindy) in her YouTube videos about this abomination people call a novel.

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