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Hoover is a huge bestseller and has an immense TikTok following, so I decided to check out her most popular novel, Verity. (It's also her darkest and she warns that people who like her other books might not like this one.) Oh boy was that a good decision. At least, it was a good decision for you. This book is NUTS.
Verity is absolutely batshit literally from page one.
It opens with one of the most accidentally hilarious scenes I have ever read. Lowen, a midlist writer who moved to New York City ten years ago, sees a man fall in traffic and get his head "crushed like a grape." His head "pops like a champagne cork!" She's splattered with blood!
...and all the New Yorkers totally ignore this, because New Yorkers are so hardened that seeing a man's skull get unexpectedly crushed and blood splatter everywhere isn't worth a backward glance.
Her own reaction to this is to muse on New Yorkers vs other people.
A hot dude, Jeremy, helps her exchange her blood-splattered shirt for his so she can get to her job interview, mentioning that he wasn't bothered by the guy's head exploding in front of him because he's seen worse things.
I assumed he meant he was a combat veteran because war is literally the only way anyone ever gets used to heads exploding. Instead, he says his eight-year-old daughter drowned in a lake.
...okay, yes, that is more traumatic than seeing a stranger's head explode. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE USED TO HEADS EXPLODING! I HAVE SEEN A BUNCH OF CORPSES BUT I WOULD STILL BE FREAKED OUT IF SOMEONE'S HEAD WAS UNEXPECTEDLY CRUSHED IN FRONT OF ME!
Lowen rushes to her job interview, which coincidentally is with Jeremy. He is the husband of bestselling author Verity, who was disabled in a car crash and is unable to finish her book series. Lowen is hired to finish it for her. For literally no reason it's a big secret that Verity was injured so this is announced as her randomly collaborating with Lowen.
At this point I started liveblogging over email:
- We have just learned that Jeremy has TWO dead daughters, not one. They were twins who died six months apart.
Also, the heroine's mother just died slowly of colon cancer.
- Lowen is now staying at the house of the Jeremy and his mysteriously disabled wife Verity. She has been placed in the master bedroom, which has human toothmarks on the headboard, she presumes from extremely hot sex.
- Verity is in a coma. I'm calling it now: she murdered the kids and framed her husband, and she's faking the coma.
Lowen discovers that Verity has written a memoir, which she proceeds to read veeeery sloooooowly, at a pace of one chapter per day maximum. The revelations about Verity all come from the memoir.
Spoiler cut.
- Ultimate evil: Verity tried to abort their twins after Jeremy said he loved the fetuses more than he loved her. Shock horror!
- LOLOLOL one of the twins was BORN SCARRED because of the failed coat hanger abortion. Meanwhile, Verity seems to be gaslighting the heroine by doing deniable non-coma things.
- Verity evilly hates breastfeeding.
- Verity always writes villain POV because she is a villain.
- In the present day, the supposedly comatose Verity has apparently stabbed the surviving kid with a hidden knife.
- In her memoir, Verity dreamed that one twin (Chastin) was smothering the other (Harper). Verity suddenly loved Chastin and decided that Harper really was going to kill her, so she attempted to smother Harper. This was when the twins were infants. It's strongly implied that this caused Harper to develop Asperger's.
- Lowen sleepwalks. When she was ten she awoke covered in blood and with a broken wrist. Security footage showed that she sleepwalked outside, climbed onto a fence, stood on the fence for an hour, then jumped off. This freaked out her mother so much that she sent 10-year-old Lowen into inpatient psychiatric care for two weeks (this would never happen because of sleepwalking, WTF) and when she returned, her mother had moved into a spare room as far from Lowen's room as possible, and put three locks on her (the mother's) door.
- In the present, Lowen sleepwalked into Verity's BED. When she awoke, she was so freaked out that she agreed to let Jeremy install a lock on the OUTSIDE of her door and lock her in at night. Very safe in case of fires like what might happen if a deranged homicidal supposedly catatonic jealous wife is lurking upstairs!
- Forgot to mention that the youngest kid, a boy, is named Crew.
Chastin, Harper, and Crew are the most bougie names ever. It's also funny because literally the only other time I've encountered the name Chasten is Pete Buttigieg's husband.
- Verity stood at the top of the stairs and watched Jeremy and Lowen making out, but rushed back to bed before Jeremy could see her. To reassure or possibly gaslight Lowen, Jeremy has now installed a lock on the outside of Verity's door. So now he's got two women locked inside their rooms at night.
- Actual quote, perhaps the only time I have ever enjoyed reading about puking:
I vomited on the chicken.
- Not as funny as if it was a live chicken, but she's washing a whole raw chicken in the sink when they get the call that Chastin has died of peanut allergy. Here is the whole thing, which is a great example of bathos/narm:
The phone rang. I was washing the chicken.
Jeremy answered it. I was washing the chicken.
He raised his voice. Still washing the fucking chicken.
Verity is convinced that Harper murdered Chastin. Both girls are eight.
- Verity's memoir confesses to drowning Harper.
Have I mentioned that Lowen reads exactly one chapter maximum per day even though she's convinced Verity is faking her coma and maybe it would be good to READ FASTER?
- More out of context theatre:
We can't get past two murder attempts, Jeremy.
- This does actually have a pretty good, albeit totally batshit and nonsensical twist.
Lowen FINALLY finishes reading the memoir, then gives it to Jeremy. He goes apeshit and they both rush up to confront Verity. She admits that she was faking her coma (for six months! while under a nurse's care!), and they collude to murder her and make it look like she died in her sleep.
Lowen and Jeremy get married and Lowen gets pregnant. Then Lowen finds a letter from Verity to Jeremy, hidden in her bedroom!
Verity explains that her "memoir" was complete fiction that she began as a writing exercise to get into the mindset for writing from the POV of villains. She would write about her real life, but as if she was evil. She continued this as a sort of deranged trauma therapy after their daughters died. (Her memoir is about 80% extremely explicit porn and 20% evil, so... that's a thing.) But (she tells Jeremy to whom she's writing this letter) Jeremy found her fake memoir, believed it, and staged her death in a car crash.
She survived, but when she awoke from her coma she realized she could never prove that the memoir was fiction, and if she "woke up" he'd just murder her again or turn her in to the police. So she decided to pretend to be in a coma while she decided what to do, because that makes sense. Which she proceeds to do for SIX MONTHS, while plotting to flee and take Crew with her, leaving just the letter explaining that she is definitely not a murderer.
Lowen then realizes that 1) Verity was innocent, 2) Jeremy knew about the existence of the memoir all along and possibly deliberately left it for her to read. (And presumably went slowly insane as Lowen slooooooooowly read it.) Lowen then eats the letter and decides to never tell Jeremy about it, because for all she knows the memoir was the truth and the letter was the lie, and in any event, Jeremy only murdered Verity THREE TIMES because he thought she murdered his daughter.
The end!
The exploding head has nothing to do with anything, except for a thematic thing about some people having lots of random bad stuff happen to them.
I can tell why Verity is a bestseller despite being batshit, melodramatic, and kind of nonsensical: it is pretty compelling reading. I finished it in a day.
Verity is absolutely batshit literally from page one.
It opens with one of the most accidentally hilarious scenes I have ever read. Lowen, a midlist writer who moved to New York City ten years ago, sees a man fall in traffic and get his head "crushed like a grape." His head "pops like a champagne cork!" She's splattered with blood!
...and all the New Yorkers totally ignore this, because New Yorkers are so hardened that seeing a man's skull get unexpectedly crushed and blood splatter everywhere isn't worth a backward glance.
Her own reaction to this is to muse on New Yorkers vs other people.
A hot dude, Jeremy, helps her exchange her blood-splattered shirt for his so she can get to her job interview, mentioning that he wasn't bothered by the guy's head exploding in front of him because he's seen worse things.
I assumed he meant he was a combat veteran because war is literally the only way anyone ever gets used to heads exploding. Instead, he says his eight-year-old daughter drowned in a lake.
...okay, yes, that is more traumatic than seeing a stranger's head explode. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE USED TO HEADS EXPLODING! I HAVE SEEN A BUNCH OF CORPSES BUT I WOULD STILL BE FREAKED OUT IF SOMEONE'S HEAD WAS UNEXPECTEDLY CRUSHED IN FRONT OF ME!
Lowen rushes to her job interview, which coincidentally is with Jeremy. He is the husband of bestselling author Verity, who was disabled in a car crash and is unable to finish her book series. Lowen is hired to finish it for her. For literally no reason it's a big secret that Verity was injured so this is announced as her randomly collaborating with Lowen.
At this point I started liveblogging over email:
- We have just learned that Jeremy has TWO dead daughters, not one. They were twins who died six months apart.
Also, the heroine's mother just died slowly of colon cancer.
- Lowen is now staying at the house of the Jeremy and his mysteriously disabled wife Verity. She has been placed in the master bedroom, which has human toothmarks on the headboard, she presumes from extremely hot sex.
- Verity is in a coma. I'm calling it now: she murdered the kids and framed her husband, and she's faking the coma.
Lowen discovers that Verity has written a memoir, which she proceeds to read veeeery sloooooowly, at a pace of one chapter per day maximum. The revelations about Verity all come from the memoir.
Spoiler cut.
- Ultimate evil: Verity tried to abort their twins after Jeremy said he loved the fetuses more than he loved her. Shock horror!
- LOLOLOL one of the twins was BORN SCARRED because of the failed coat hanger abortion. Meanwhile, Verity seems to be gaslighting the heroine by doing deniable non-coma things.
- Verity evilly hates breastfeeding.
- Verity always writes villain POV because she is a villain.
- In the present day, the supposedly comatose Verity has apparently stabbed the surviving kid with a hidden knife.
- In her memoir, Verity dreamed that one twin (Chastin) was smothering the other (Harper). Verity suddenly loved Chastin and decided that Harper really was going to kill her, so she attempted to smother Harper. This was when the twins were infants. It's strongly implied that this caused Harper to develop Asperger's.
- Lowen sleepwalks. When she was ten she awoke covered in blood and with a broken wrist. Security footage showed that she sleepwalked outside, climbed onto a fence, stood on the fence for an hour, then jumped off. This freaked out her mother so much that she sent 10-year-old Lowen into inpatient psychiatric care for two weeks (this would never happen because of sleepwalking, WTF) and when she returned, her mother had moved into a spare room as far from Lowen's room as possible, and put three locks on her (the mother's) door.
- In the present, Lowen sleepwalked into Verity's BED. When she awoke, she was so freaked out that she agreed to let Jeremy install a lock on the OUTSIDE of her door and lock her in at night. Very safe in case of fires like what might happen if a deranged homicidal supposedly catatonic jealous wife is lurking upstairs!
- Forgot to mention that the youngest kid, a boy, is named Crew.
Chastin, Harper, and Crew are the most bougie names ever. It's also funny because literally the only other time I've encountered the name Chasten is Pete Buttigieg's husband.
- Verity stood at the top of the stairs and watched Jeremy and Lowen making out, but rushed back to bed before Jeremy could see her. To reassure or possibly gaslight Lowen, Jeremy has now installed a lock on the outside of Verity's door. So now he's got two women locked inside their rooms at night.
- Actual quote, perhaps the only time I have ever enjoyed reading about puking:
I vomited on the chicken.
- Not as funny as if it was a live chicken, but she's washing a whole raw chicken in the sink when they get the call that Chastin has died of peanut allergy. Here is the whole thing, which is a great example of bathos/narm:
The phone rang. I was washing the chicken.
Jeremy answered it. I was washing the chicken.
He raised his voice. Still washing the fucking chicken.
Verity is convinced that Harper murdered Chastin. Both girls are eight.
- Verity's memoir confesses to drowning Harper.
Have I mentioned that Lowen reads exactly one chapter maximum per day even though she's convinced Verity is faking her coma and maybe it would be good to READ FASTER?
- More out of context theatre:
We can't get past two murder attempts, Jeremy.
- This does actually have a pretty good, albeit totally batshit and nonsensical twist.
Lowen FINALLY finishes reading the memoir, then gives it to Jeremy. He goes apeshit and they both rush up to confront Verity. She admits that she was faking her coma (for six months! while under a nurse's care!), and they collude to murder her and make it look like she died in her sleep.
Lowen and Jeremy get married and Lowen gets pregnant. Then Lowen finds a letter from Verity to Jeremy, hidden in her bedroom!
Verity explains that her "memoir" was complete fiction that she began as a writing exercise to get into the mindset for writing from the POV of villains. She would write about her real life, but as if she was evil. She continued this as a sort of deranged trauma therapy after their daughters died. (Her memoir is about 80% extremely explicit porn and 20% evil, so... that's a thing.) But (she tells Jeremy to whom she's writing this letter) Jeremy found her fake memoir, believed it, and staged her death in a car crash.
She survived, but when she awoke from her coma she realized she could never prove that the memoir was fiction, and if she "woke up" he'd just murder her again or turn her in to the police. So she decided to pretend to be in a coma while she decided what to do, because that makes sense. Which she proceeds to do for SIX MONTHS, while plotting to flee and take Crew with her, leaving just the letter explaining that she is definitely not a murderer.
Lowen then realizes that 1) Verity was innocent, 2) Jeremy knew about the existence of the memoir all along and possibly deliberately left it for her to read. (And presumably went slowly insane as Lowen slooooooooowly read it.) Lowen then eats the letter and decides to never tell Jeremy about it, because for all she knows the memoir was the truth and the letter was the lie, and in any event, Jeremy only murdered Verity THREE TIMES because he thought she murdered his daughter.
The end!
The exploding head has nothing to do with anything, except for a thematic thing about some people having lots of random bad stuff happen to them.
I can tell why Verity is a bestseller despite being batshit, melodramatic, and kind of nonsensical: it is pretty compelling reading. I finished it in a day.
