Verity

Colleen Hoover caught my attention when she held Amazon’s #1 spot ahead of Stephen King’s Fairy Tale with her latest book It Ends With Us. In fact, when I looked at the number of ratings and reviews (three to six times anything Rowling, King, Grisham, or Brown have amassed from their greatest hits) I thought it was unlikely. Perhaps she was scamming the system somehow. Then I read the NY Times article about her emergence as a publishing phenomenon. The comments that the piece elicited were politically polarizing, often framed in terms of blue-collar values versus literary snobism. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, even if they’d never read her work.

So, before I weighed in with an opinion, I bought the audiobook version of her 2021 novel Verity. Despite suffering criticism from some who accuse her of peddling trauma-porn, I found Verity to be competently written and expertly plotted, crossing the genres of suspense and erotica. Throw in two narrators, one of whom is unreliable, and Verity is hard to put down. It doesn’t make a pretense of being anything other than what it is — excellent entertainment. And that’s no small feat in itself. Does the book have its faults? Sure. Personally, I would have preferred that the characters’ relationships revolved around more than just marathon sexual athleticism. But that won’t keep me from recommending the book. Verity will keep you entertained. And there’s nothing wrong with that.