Scan barcode
A review by bella613
Verity by Colleen Hoover
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This was... definitely something.
I liked it until chapter 23. The last few chapters felt boring, rushed, and lazy after all the build up.
But actually I don't know if "I liked it" is quite the right way to put it. Reading this book gave me the same feeling as when you overhear a juicy piece of gossip about something horrible. It makes you dislike the person who did the thing, the people who are gossiping about it, and kinda also yourself for listening in. Every character in this book is so incredibly terrible (except maybe the children but they weren't well developed) and it felt more like I had to read it than wanted to.
The writing isn't great but Hoover definitely does a great job at making you love to hate her characters. Maybe the hype around her is hate-bonding, like when students group together in class because you hate the professor and the material and then after you leave and look back, it looks like a positive experience because of the community made within the hate.
Anyway, this was difficult to rate and I might change it later once I've had time to think about it. It's better than what I expected because I heard a lot of fuss over the author and wasn't interested because of that. A colleague suggested this book to me and I took a long time to actually pick it up. I don't think I'd necessarily recommend it but I am going to read more by the author (mostly because of the movie coming out lol)
Also can I just say: Colleen Hoover was marketed to me as a romance author. Unless the other books she writes are drastically different than this, she definitely is quite the opposite of a romance style writer...?? This is not romance (although not decisively thriller, either?) I would probably call it horror but tbh it doesn't fit great there either. Idk what to call it but there is zero romance whatsoever. Sex scenes, yes, and some weirdly obsessive lust from all the characters but not romance. Maybe the people hating on her and judging the authors morals based on her fiction books are just classifying this incorrectly 😂
I liked it until chapter 23. The last few chapters felt boring, rushed, and lazy after all the build up.
But actually I don't know if "I liked it" is quite the right way to put it. Reading this book gave me the same feeling as when you overhear a juicy piece of gossip about something horrible. It makes you dislike the person who did the thing, the people who are gossiping about it, and kinda also yourself for listening in. Every character in this book is so incredibly terrible (except maybe the children but they weren't well developed) and it felt more like I had to read it than wanted to.
The writing isn't great but Hoover definitely does a great job at making you love to hate her characters. Maybe the hype around her is hate-bonding, like when students group together in class because you hate the professor and the material and then after you leave and look back, it looks like a positive experience because of the community made within the hate.
Anyway, this was difficult to rate and I might change it later once I've had time to think about it. It's better than what I expected because I heard a lot of fuss over the author and wasn't interested because of that. A colleague suggested this book to me and I took a long time to actually pick it up. I don't think I'd necessarily recommend it but I am going to read more by the author (mostly because of the movie coming out lol)
Also can I just say: Colleen Hoover was marketed to me as a romance author. Unless the other books she writes are drastically different than this, she definitely is quite the opposite of a romance style writer...?? This is not romance (although not decisively thriller, either?) I would probably call it horror but tbh it doesn't fit great there either. Idk what to call it but there is zero romance whatsoever. Sex scenes, yes, and some weirdly obsessive lust from all the characters but not romance. Maybe the people hating on her and judging the authors morals based on her fiction books are just classifying this incorrectly 😂
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail