From the Indigo website:
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of the night her family was forever altered.
Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I’ve never read any of Colleen Hoover’s books before, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like her genre is more romance-oriented, but you wouldn’t know it when you pick up Verity. There are some ~spicy~ moments in the novel, but overall it felt like a strong thriller novel to me, and I would have easily believed that was her typical genre. Her writing style is very accessible and easy to read, and the story itself was so gripping, I couldn’t put the book down!
There was one scene that was really hard for me to digest – the moment in Verity’s manuscript where she describes going into the bathroom and attempting to abort her twins with a metal hanger. When I read that, it truly made me feel like my insides were curdling, I was cringing so much. But I take that response as a good sign in a way, because I think it takes a strong writer to make you have that kind of physical reaction to their words.
In regards to Jeremy and Verity’s relationship, I think they were both toxic, in their own ways. I mean, Verity is toxic for obvious reasons. If you read the book and don’t think she’s toxic…yikes.
But, based on her autobiography manuscript, I get the sense that she never actually loved Jeremy, even though she repeatedly describes how obsessively in love with him she was. Based on the way she describes her feelings, I don’t think that’s love, I think it’s aggressive lust and obsession. If she loved him, she would have actually cared about his feelings and emotional needs. However, she only seemed to care about him and his emotions in regards to her. If it wasn’t centred on her, she wasn’t happy. If he wasn’t constantly wanting physical intimacy from her, she wasn’t happy.
She didn’t care if hurting the twins would upset him – she only cared about how those emotions would potentially inconvenience her, or perhaps alter the amount of attention she would receive from him. It didn’t matter how he truly felt or thought, it only mattered that his attentiveness to her went uninterrupted. It seems like in her mind, Jeremy was only allowed to exist in relation to her and her existence. He couldn’t have any life, autonomy, or world outside of her, or it made her crazy with jealousy.
Although Verity was very obviously toxic, I think Jeremy was toxic, in a way, too. It seems like Jeremy, whether he realizes it or not, wants women to be crazy over him. I feel like he only caught feelings for Lowen because he could see that she was falling hard for him. He had a sick wife, his twin daughters died recently, and he had a young son to care for. How could he have any emotional capacity to be catching feelings for and wanting to develop a relationship with a new woman he had just met? I think for most people, the possibility wouldn’t have even crossed their mind. Also, let’s be real – his character doesn’t seem THAT great. What does he really have to offer? He was hot? Is that enough for these two women to have fallen for him in such an obsessive way almost instantaneously after meeting him? Or is he just very charismatic, and has figured out exactly how to appeal to women’s desires so that they do feel relentlessly drawn to him?
Now, although I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it isn’t without its flaws.
One area of the novel that I found a little hard to believe was that Verity would be able to fake her condition so well, and for so long, without some kind of aid from drugs or something to sedate her, or without someone suspecting fraud sooner. The fact that she didn’t even flinch when Lowen threw the wooden ball in front of her? Or the fact that she was clearly sloppy, but still somehow went undetected for so long. Lowen had only been there for a couple weeks, and had seen Verity slip up enough times that she immediately suspected something was up. But, although I found that to be a bit hard to believe, it didn’t really bother me much. It didn’t take away from the story for me, and it wasn’t even really something I thought about until after I finished the book. So, I suppose it’s just me being a little bit nit-picky.
One part that did kind of confuse me towards the end, though, was when we found out Jeremy had previously read the manuscript. That didn’t make sense to me, and I kind of wish that hadn’t been the case, because I think it made it harder for things to add up. If he had previously read the manuscript, why wouldn’t he have done something sooner? He seemed like he truly cared for her when she was injured – was that just an act? How could he not despise her or hold clear resentment for her, even if she had been in an accident. I think if he still believed she killed one of the twins, surely he’d be more than happy to ship her off to a care facility rather than keeping her home and caring for her himself. And surely he wouldn’t want Crew around her after Crew had witnessed her killing his sister. Before the car accident, after Jeremy had read the manuscript for the first time, he was ready to kill her for murdering their daughter. Then, it seems like that anger didn’t come back until he confirmed that she was faking her condition all along. Unless re-reading the manuscript reignited the anger within him, which I suppose could be a possibility. But it almost came across like he was just angry that she had been fooling him the entire time. I don’t know, I just found that part was a bit strange. I know it was necessary for him to have previously read the manuscript in order for the letter she leaves behind to make sense, and the letter was necessary in order to add that twist in at the end, but…it just seemed a bit out of left field, in my opinion.
Speaking of the letter…
When I first read that twist ending, and finished the book, I honestly didn’t know what to think. But ultimately, I think the letter was another one of Verity’s manipulative lies to cover her own ass. I thought of something Lowen had said when reading the manuscript – she mentioned something like, ‘Verity must have done these things because a mother wouldn’t even think to put it in writing if it wasn’t true’. Which is a good point – and why put such incriminating words down on paper without some kind of disclaimer if it weren’t true? Why not include a note stating that the autobiography is a work of fiction, an exercise project assigned to her by her agent? But even still, I think if someone had lived through such traumatizing events that Verity had lived through, they wouldn’t want to use that to write some fictionalized piece about their part in it – if your daughter had just tragically died, would you really want to write a fake story about you murdering her? And about how much you despised her from the moment she was conceived? I don’t think most people could stomach that, especially not in such a short period of time after the accident.
But then again, if the manuscript were entirely true, and she was as obsessed with Jeremy as it claims, how could she run away from him and live without him like her letter stated she was planning to do? According to the manuscript, the whole reason she tried to abort her daughters, and ultimately ended up killing her daughter, was because she couldn’t live without Jeremy’s complete, undivided attention. And, even if the letter was a lie to cover her ass, she still clearly wrote it with the intention of Jeremy finding it after she ran away. So why go through all that to regain his attention, and then decide to just leave him in the end anyways?
Oh man, I love plot-twist endings like this. They just leave you thinking and thinking without any real, definitive resolution to what the truth is.
Until next time,
Nadine
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