Verity is the worst book I have ever read in my entire life and I am GOBSMACKED by the amount of people I like and respect rating this shit 5 stars. Jeremy is the most boring piece of white bread and yet two women are going absolutely INSANE over him??? Lowen takes days to read what is possibly the shortest manuscript ever?? A manuscript which, by the way, is just sex. Most of this book is just sex. I was praying for it to end. Please god let it end.

Verity also deserves an Oscar for managing to fool an entire hospital, care staff, etc. that she wasn't actually disabled and was fine. And how did she avoid flinching when Lowen tried to make her flinch? Is that even possible? Wouldn't that be really fucking hard to learn? But there's no explanation of Verity's prize winning skills.

There's also a lot of moments where I felt distinctly like "this is uncomfortable" but that weren't noted at all. First, at the start, Jeremy and Lowen are in a random men's bathroom to clean her up because she's covered in blood, right? And in front of this ABSOLUTE STRANGER she takes off her shirt. Okay, fine, maybe she doesn't mind. But then Jeremy proceeds to LOCK THE DOOR and instead of finding this strange or alarming, Lowen is like aww! How kind of him!

And later in the book, it's established that she has a problem with sleepwalking and will even unlock her own door and go outside. Jeremy proposes installing another lock so that he can lock her in from the outside and she can't leave the room UNTIL HE LETS HER. Once again, this is seen not as alarming or terrifying (she barely even knows him!!!!) but she's like omg aww that's so sweet of him. I also thought this lock was going to be a big deal, but like many of the things in this book (the sleepwalking included), absolutely nothing happened with it. Idk what the point of it all was.

Absolute shite. I read it for a laugh and I wasn't even laughing, just furious at the popularity of such a godawful book. I couldn't even call it a thriller because Lowen is almost immediately like, I think Verity is faking being disabled, and bam! Yes! That's the case! And the letter was so fucking stupid. What an annoying twist. I don't even care whether Verity was evil or not.

Plus, and this is definitely more of a personal take, it seems from reading and watching reviews of Hoover's other books that the ideal end goal of every single female character is to settle down with a man and have babies. She's a bit obsessed with it (speaking of, how insanely fertile are the ladies in Verity?!). So the fact that Verity's evil actions come because she doesn't want these things... It gives me bad vibes. I'm not saying that Hoover is doing this deliberately, by any means, but I think the ideal woman being one that marries and demurely becomes a mother and the evil woman being one that doesn't want to be a mother and that doesn't love her kids isn't the greatest.

And my final question: who the fuck is BITING INTO A HEADBOARD??? How strong are their teeth?!