Book Review of Verity by Colleen Hoover, Warning: It Ain't Pretty!

Hello bookworms! Oh boy, well here goes nothin'. My first negative book review. I just wanted to get that clear right off the bat so if you don't want to read anything negative about Colleen Hoover's writing, then you've been warned! This will be spoiler free as well.

Let's jump into the synopsis shall we? Lowen is the main character in this romantic (eh?) thriller (double eh?). She's had a run of bad luck what with running out of money and her mother's death. Everything changes for the better (she thinks) when she gets offered a very generous offer to finish a famous author's book series. This author is named Verity and she is incapacitated due to a car accident. Verity's husband Jeremy wants Lowen to finish the book series and invites her to stay at their family home to go through Verity's notes and outlines for the series. Lowen agrees and once she's digging through Verity's things, she comes upon a secret autobiography that opens a whole new glimpse into Jeremy and Verity's life. 

Now, starting this book, I'll be honest and admit that I LOVED it! I got sucked right in, I could relate to Lowen's introvertedness, and I fell in love with how sweet Jeremy was. I read, read, read, coming upon many a loose end, open ended situation, and random observation that led nowhere in the rest of the book, but I skipped over those and thought, the author will tidy everything up at the end. 

Well folks, I get to the end. And I silently scream and want to break my kindle. Not in a good way either. In a oh-my-god-I-wasted-24-hours-of-my-life-for-this?! kind of way. Without giving anything away, the ending is a total rushed, cop-out. None of the random, loose ended situations are given a second thought or conclusion. Two characters are twisted in a 180 degree turn that gave me whiplash and a huge amount of doubt that humans can even change that much. Nothing makes sense and all is disappointment. Reading that ending made me feel like Colleen Hoover doesn't respect the intelligence of her readers and just wanted to hurry and complete by her deadline so she could collect her check. 

This wasn't particularly romantic (especially with that ending). But it wasn't particularly a thriller either? A thriller needs a certain level of...well, thrill, and that ending sucked it all out. I don't even know what to classify this book as other than a big fat disappointment. 

I've seen her average review rating for this book is surprisingly 4.5 stars, so perhaps I'm just a big dummy and I don't get "it". I'm glad other people enjoyed it but I'm very sad I didn't. 

I give this 1 measly star. The star is for the beginning of the book, because honestly, it started off quite good. Verity had oodles of potential but unfortunately, execution failed and the potential smothered and died.