Wanna know what Colleen Hoover’s Verity and my ex have in common? They both left me deeply unsatisfied. joking joking…. but no really.
It’s 10:30PM on a Saturday night. On the 30th floor of 5th and Brazos I can feel the vibrations of techno and rock reverberate throughout my body. The lively chatter, laughs, and shrieks of young people are distant as they begin to take on their night on the one and only 6th street. That should be me. I’m 21; i’m young and fine as hell. I should be out on the town, yet I could think of nothing more dreadful than stumbling around tipsy with my friends in a dress that is too tight and heels that are too tall. Wandering aimlessly from club to club finding ‘joy’ in the numbness of it all. Instead I’d rather be here; curled up on the couch in my boyfriend’s dimly lit apartment reading Coleen Hoover’s Verity.
Verity Chapter 1-5
Once I made it to chapter five I wanted nothing more than to fight the people who did not adequately warn me. Hoover’s writing is TOO GOOD. Like let’s talk about suspense!!
I really resonated with her descriptions of New York. If you have been keeping up with me of my blog you know that I lived there for about 6 months and I absolutely loved it. I felt invisible in the most peaceful way and I was very pleased to find out that Lowen finds peace in that same sense of invisibility.
In Hoover’s writing she literally slices open the soul of women and extracts some of our most intimate thought processes then slaps them on a page for the world to see. I mean I felt NAKED during parts of this novel i tell you!! The way the plot teases at your most sinister desires is ingenious.
Chapter one and two of Verity’s auto biography leave me and apparently Lowen with a hint of sadness for everything that Jermey and Verity were supposed to be. By the end of chapter 5 I mourned their ‘happily ever after’ and took in the sobering reality of what life could deliver.
Chapter 5 Onward
That is another aspect of this novel that I found to be incredibly intriguing. The way Hoover not only delivers the reader a relatable character like Lowen, but also an ideal character, the girl you (initially) want to be, Verity. Then once your longing to be Verity comes to its climax Hoover unveils what the reader believes to be Verity’s true sinister character. This dramatic unveiling begins around chapter three of Verity’s manuscript.
Naturally you retreat to find homage in Lowen and Jermey’s budding romance because what is a hot and steamy love story with no guilt.
The Ending of Verity OMG
Just when the novel begins folding itself into a neat bow, Verity comes back from the grave to toss a hand grenade into the love story we fell involve with. This plot twist left me wanting to burn the book and erase it from my mind indefinitely. It’s like season 4 of Pretty Little Liars when we found out who A was and then they told us that wasn’t actually A and then the show continued on for another 4 seasons. Coleen Hover didn’t give us a cliff hanger, worse, she threw us off the cliff.
Bonus Chapter
And when I thought the bonus chapter would give me the closure the novel refused, it just made everything worse. Hoover begins to deconstruct the identity of characters she spent the ENTIRE novel building. Jermey is crazy, Verity is crazy, Crew is crazy, and Lowen is crazy too.
Usually I fall in love with characters in novels; I look up to them in a way. Sarah J Maas (which I 10/10 recommend for your next smutty adventure) usually delivers heroic characters with a twist that I carry with me even when the book comes to an end; however Ms. Coleen left me with no one except myself in the end.
Conclusion
Ya know I always used to say smut has the potential to ruin relationships because a phenomenal female author can create the man every woman wants to a T. They can create these perfect moments that leave you questioning what you consider to be perfection
As you inhale every last word the author has to give you allow yourself the luxury of thinking that moments like that could come to life and make you feel that exact way. That is the issue though. For many of us our most intense feelings rest in the past. You can never recall just how monumental something is until you’ve grown from it. Maybe that’s just me but I feel like that’s my greatest challenge, reveling in the magic of the moment and not just romanazising the memories of it all.
The magical moments in our relationships are every bit as gripping and exciting as the ones on our novels, well sometimes lol. Verity said it best in her manuscript, we can’t recognize love at first sight until after the fact.
In closing I must say I will be trying very hard to forget about Verity.
I rate this one a 8/10 Thanks for reading!!
also pleaseee join my under construction bookclub lol I need people to rant to
Thank you for joining!!
Questions for you guys because I can’t
- Who was ur favorite character in the novel?
- Do you think the letter was Verity’s last hoorah when she saw Jermey falling for Lowen?
- How true do you think the manuscript is?
- How should the story have ended?
- On a scale of one to 10 how mentally ill do you think crew is?
Also if you haven’t read the bonus chapter, here is a free link to it 🙂