Verity – Colleen Hoover

Lowen is a struggling author, behind on her rent and facing eviction, when an opportunity presents itself. A famous, successful, and wealthy writer, Verity Crawford, has been badly injured in a car accident and is unable to continue a hugely popular and remunerative series of novels. The publishers and Mr Crawford need a reliable and discreet ghostwriter to pick up the threads, decipher Verity’s notes, and finish the books.

 Lowen is dubious but two things propel her to at least take a look at the job. First, she is homeless and there is a residential element, at least initially, to the task. Second, Jeremy Crawford is handsome and seems to find her attractive too. She moves in to find the household includes a young son and a daytime nurse/housekeeper. She also discovers that two earlier twin daughters have died in separate tragic circumstances and that Verity is not just injured, she is bedridden and unable to communicate – the lights are on, but nobody is at home.

 Where does this leave Jeremy Crawford? Two daughters dead and a wife as good as. Surely in need of comfort, if Lowen can overcome her scruples and the overshadowing presence of Verity upstairs.

 Things happen to spook Lowen, cause her to suspect Verity’s incapacity. She discovers a draft autobiography that reveals uncomfortable details of her and Jeremy’s marital (and detailed sexual) relations and of the daughters’ demises. It gives her all sorts of moral dilemmas to resolve against a background of increased attraction between her and Verity’s husband.

 The present tense, first person narrative gives a fine urgency to proceedings. Jeopardy and tension abound. How far can the reader rely on Lowen’s self-serving narrative, or on the husband’s version of events, or on the son’s occasional curve ball revelations, or for that matter on Verity’s written testimony? Whose is the truth, where, so to speak, is the verity?

It is a promising set-up. The wife upstairs enables Hoover to generate a Du Maurier’s Rebecca-like atmosphere, but that is swiftly overridden by the rather prurient autobiography and antics of Lowen and Jeremy that seem increasingly unlikely and turn the novel more into a bonkbuster than a blockbuster.