Verity

Combining the intrigue of a physiological thriller with some extra steamy spice, this week we are looking for the truth with Verity by Colleen Hoover.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Before we begin this episode, we want to address an important matter.

(00:03):
During the recording of our review of Verity by Colleen Hoover, Alexis informed me of allegations
involving Colleen Hoover's son and her public defense of him in a case of alleged sexual
assault against a minor.
I want to make it clear that I was unaware of this situation at the time of recording,
and Alexis and I do not discuss which books we are reviewing until we begin recording.
By discussing this book, we are in no way promoting Colleen Hoover's work, nor do we

(00:25):
condone her actions or those of her son.
We believe in fostering conversations that are informed and responsible, and we are committed
to being mindful of such matters.
Thank you for your understanding.
This is Smuddy Side Up.

(00:48):
In each episode, we deep dive into a popular or not so popular book in the romance world
and all the subgenres that encompasses.
We look at everything from the tropes and characters to weird euphemisms for genitalia
and tell you whether we think it's worth a read.
We're not here to kink shame or yuck anyone's yum.
These are just our opinions, and sometimes we even disagree with ourselves.

(01:10):
Content Warning.
This is an explicit podcast.
If you are easily offended or have modest sensibilities, please listen at your own discretion.
If you are my father, brother, father-in-law, brother-in-law, identify as a father to me
or have ever called me like a sister to you, please turn this off immediately.
So sit back, let a candle, and let's metaphorically crack the spine on this week's book.

(01:32):
Before we dive in, you should know who's talking to you.
I'm Alexis, a single foster mom.
Somehow I have found myself deeply embedded on all things book talk.
I've read way too many romance novels, and my low-key obsessive tendencies mean I'm
incapable of DNF-ing anything.
And I'm Ricky, a mom to two boys and a gluten-free bakery owner.
Do I have time to read?

(01:54):
No.
Do I do it anyway?
Yes.
I have strong and harsh opinions made harsher by my complete lack of sleep, and I apologize
in advance for offending you.
Okay.
Hi, Alexis.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Hi, Ricky.
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good.
So after last week's episode, I gave a little trailer, a little taste about the book that

(02:19):
we're going to be talking about today.
Do you have any idea what that book is?
I have no idea.
I genuinely am certain I saw a TikTok where they talked about it.
It may be on the like 400 titles deep to be read on my Goodreads, but I do not have any
idea what this book is.
Okay.
Good to know.

(02:40):
Well, yes, I'm sure you've seen it on TikTok.
I'm sure you're part of it a million times, actually.
But before we get into the book itself, I actually want to talk about how it came to me.
So every year, my girlfriends and I have a Super Bowl party.
We eat pizza and wings and then watch the halftime show.
And then we watch J Lo's and Beyonce's halftime shows.
And then we spend the rest of the night catching up and doing a clothing swap.

(03:03):
So a couple of years ago, one of the side conversations happening was about books, and
I overheard someone say, like, oh, it's really good.
And oh, yeah, it's a psychological thriller.
So I asked for the name of the book and I asked no follow up questions.
That night I downloaded it to my iPad and I started reading it.
And let me tell you, I had absolutely no idea that it was a romance book.

(03:27):
And I was clutching my pearls when I got to the first Smuddy scene.
I was completely thrown off guard.
I had no idea what was going on.
Real shock to the system, but it got me in.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pretty, pretty classic for me, but that's how it all began.

(03:49):
So in the wise words of Dame Julie Andrews, let's start at the very beginning.
It's a very good place to start.
When you read, you begin with, don't rain me.
And in romance, I began with Verity.
Okay.
Our first musical theater reference, or not musical theater, but musical reference, right
off the top.
We're not even like two minutes in.

(04:10):
Yeah.
No, I said last week it's going to be in every episode.
I can't even tell you how big my smile was when I came up with that.
And that was early on in my script.
All right.
Okay.
So today we are talking about Verity.
I'm assuming this is a book you've heard of.
It is a book I've heard of.
Okay.

(04:30):
Verity is a psychological thriller written by Colleen Hoover.
Now anyone who is even remotely into the romance genre has definitely heard the name
Colleen Hoover.
I'm sure you know the name Colleen Hoover.
I am aware.
I'm aware.
So her book, It Ends With Us, was recently made into a motion picture starring Blake
Lively and her name is becoming, I guess, somewhat of a household name.

(04:55):
My plan is not to talk much about any of her other books, but I will say that I DNF'd
It Ends With Us.
I just couldn't get into it.
I brought it on three vacations.
Don't think I got halfway through it.
It was just not for me.
So that's my It Ends With Us story.
I'm Verity.

(05:16):
Verity, no problem.
I got through it.
So.
All right.
Well, I'm excited.
I'm excited.
Did you read It Ends With Us?
I did not because I know what that book is about.
And I am reading a romance novel for a nice happily ever after.
What I want is just, I want to know at the beginning, like I am introduced to two characters

(05:42):
and there may be trials and maybe tribulations.
They may be horrible people, but they'll end up together at the end.
Things are going to go well 99% of the time.
It's so interesting how different you and I are.
Down to our core.
We're very similar in a lot of ways, but we're so different.
I find it frustrating that every book ends in a happily ever after.
I actively seek out books that don't.

(06:03):
Yeah.
No, I mean, I genuinely, it is the predictability of the ending is one of the things that got
me into this genre.
Interesting.
I want the trials.
For me, it was the smut, but you know, whatever.
I also like the smut, but I want the trials.
I want the tribulations.
I want like to have that moment of heartache when things aren't going well, but I also

(06:28):
want like, I want a happily ever after.
We'll dive more into this as the podcast gets bigger, but that's really interesting.
We can go with it.
Okay.
So Verity.
It's written in the first person narrative, but from a dual perspective, but not in the
traditional sense.
So Lowen, our main female character is from her perspective in the present day and from

(06:51):
Verity's perspective in the past through her manuscript, which Lowen is reading.
So we never see anything from the male main characters point of view.
I'm going to send you the cover art.
Okay.
It's like, it's very dark, but beautiful.
I at first thought it looked like a flower, but as I'm getting closer, it's some sort

(07:13):
of like, is that like a chem trail?
Not really sure.
Or a skirt.
And then there's feet.
It's a whole lot of nothing.
And then it's, it's reflected.
Yeah.
And Verity's in this like beautiful script.
And for some reason, Colleen Hoover's name is like weirdly distressed.
I feel like that's how her name is on all her books.
Am I crazy?

(07:33):
Hang on.
I don't know.
I don't know them well enough to know.
Let me check.
No, maybe not.
It's the same font.
That like distress thing is.
Yeah.
It's the same font, but like it starts with us has like a water texture over it.
And like, yeah, no, it's just the same font.
I don't know why it's distressed.

(07:54):
I got nothing.
Do you know like for her other covers, like her books that are less thriller-y are they
the ones that are more in that like pastelli colors?
And then yeah.
Yeah.
So she's kind of color coding.
Not, not all pastels, but there definitely is like a color theme to the book.
So it's like it's either a light blue background with like dark blue writing or a light pink

(08:15):
background with dark pink writing.
And those are the only two that I can think of right this second.
So that could be totally wrong.
But this one to me, like I'm just Googling it right now and there's like a whole array
of her books.
This one stands out as the odd man in the group.
Like it is dark.
It, it, it, it, Verity is even written in like a font that's just not used in any of

(08:39):
her other book covers from what I can tell.
Like it's just very different.
And the book is very different from her typical writing style and subgenre.
So it was probably intentional.
Okay.
So before I dive into the summary of the book, I really want to address the content warnings
and some personal feelings about the subject matter.
Like I said, this is a psychological thriller, but let's go through the content warnings.

(09:03):
So, okay, before we do that, can we just ask, when you look at content warnings, are you
like, I am here for this, or are you like taking them seriously?
Like I sometimes read a content warning and I was like, excellent, sign me up.
Yeah.
Typically, a content warning will have like a key word in it that will either scare people
away or draw them in.

(09:25):
And yeah, usually a darker content warning can sometimes be like, Oh, I kind of want
to know more about that personally, I didn't know the content warnings before I read this
book.
And I'm going to talk about that too.
Again, this goes back to me not asking a single follow up question.
So I'm sure this is on me, but I don't know if I would have read it if I had known the

(09:50):
content warnings.
Oh, interesting.
So let's go through these.
I'm going to list them.
And then you can tell me before I really dive into it, you can tell me if you would read
a book with these content warnings.
Okay.
Okay, we got blood and gore, mental illness, death of a child, death of a parent, attempted
suicide, attempted murder, murder, child abuse, child neglect, abortion, special abuse and

(10:13):
graphic violence.
Okay.
I mean, I think I would, it would depend on the day when I read those content warnings.
I think the child abuse stuff that would be rough if you were not in the right headspace
for it.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So these content, content warnings are no joke.

(10:33):
This book is fucked up.
And I say that as somebody who has now read it twice and then gone back to like check a
couple of things.
And I actually enjoyed it, but it is fucked up.
The first time I read it must have been about a year after I had Grayson.
And I don't remember being as affected by some of the darker child focused content.

(10:57):
Having reread it for the podcast, I had a really hard time getting through some of those
chapters.
I am now, what am I, six, seven months postpartum.
And I was truly horrified by what I was reading.
And again, this was my second time reading it.
So of course that's the point.

(11:19):
Yeah.
But I just want to make it very clear that I having already read it once felt so uncomfortable
by some of this content that if it was my first time reading it, I would not have finished
it.
It would have been a DNF.
So for all of our listeners, who are listening to this, if you are postpartum or struggling

(11:41):
with fertility, dealing with pregnancy loss or loss of a child, really in any situation
in which reading about gruesome infant or child crime, specifically at the hands of
a loved one would negatively affect you, don't read it.
Don't read it.
Don't listen to this.
Just don't.
There were actually moments while I was reading this book that I thought, like Colleen must

(12:05):
have made a list of all the terrible and horrible and disturbing things a person could do and
was just like, like checking them off as she went.
So again, I liked this book, but parts of it didn't sit well.
And again, I'm a seven months postpartum.
I think I reread it when I was six months postpartum.

(12:25):
So maybe that's why, but I need to say it right at the top.
Having said that, it is suspenseful and eerie.
It's quick-paced and there's like a lot of twists and turns.
The characters are all morally ambiguous, which to me makes a very compelling book.
I'm sure to most people who wants like super flat characters.

(12:47):
Everything went really hard on the romance side of things with Lowen and Jeremy in present
day and with Verity and Jeremy in the past retellings.
So it is a steamy book.
I give it about a three and a half to four on the steam scale.
I'm not really sure.
I don't have anything to compare that to yet, but that's where we're starting.
Okay.

(13:07):
The tropes of this book.
It's a bit of a forbidden love.
There's a ton of family secrets involved.
There's a bit of force.
There's a bit of forced proximity.
And because of the way that Lowen is reading Verity's private manuscript, it also feels
a little like voyeurism.
It's not traditionally voyeurism, but it does give that vibe.

(13:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Character descriptions.
So this is an area where I felt it was a little lacking.
The physical descriptions are somewhat big.
Again, that may or may not have been intentional, although I don't really see.
I didn't think it elevated the book by not having a clear description, but she went really

(13:53):
in depth on the development and the psychological side of each character.
So it just, it wasn't very balanced.
Okay.
Jeremy Crawford is our male main character.
He is described as tall, lean and fit, a full head of neatly styled brown hair, a good-looking
guy who looks put together yet somehow still rugged.

(14:15):
All right.
So generic, cute white boy.
Yeah.
He doesn't specify that he's white, but like, yeah, I got that too.
Do we have a height?
Nope.
Nope.
Just tall, lean and fit.
All right.
Yeah.
Tall, lean and fit.
Everyone's dream, man.
Lowen Ashley.
I'm going to use a quote.

(14:36):
I'm actually going to use two quotes from the book.
She says, my hair is dark brown and straight.
And while I've never hated it, I've always wished I had hair that was easier to work
with.
I'm not unattractive, but I'm not the kind of woman men turn their heads for.
I just want to, I just want to go out there and say, I can't think of easier hair to work
with than dark brown and straight.
Yeah.

(14:57):
That was a very confusing.
For somebody who has ridiculous curly, out of control hair that has like three different
curl patterns in it.
Yeah.
What?
I also think it's funny we're back to that same idea of like, I'm just like medium.
I have brown hair and I'm not anything special.
Yes.
Yeah.

(15:17):
It's very much that.
And then we have our second female main character, Verity Crawford.
And from her own manuscript, she says, I wasn't the most beautiful woman in the room, but
I knew how to make people think I was.
I had long flowing blonde hair and I wore it down that night because I knew it was my
best feature.
I wasn't just beautiful.
I was smart, cunning and knew how to keep him hooked.

(15:40):
All right.
I find it interesting that the only physical traits that both Verity and Lowen talk about
themselves is their hair.
Yeah.
That has, that does not come back in the book.
That is not a thing, but I just thought that was interesting.
That is very interesting.
I mean, I guess is it like an attempt to get everyone to see themselves more in the main

(16:00):
characters?
If there's, you know, very little description, you can dye your hair.
Anyone could have brown hair or blonde hair.
Which, I mean, I have dyed my hair every color at the, I mean, not the rainbow, but like
every natural hair color you can have, I've had it and it was not natural.
True.
So, yeah, those are our character descriptions.
I didn't put it into AI because frankly, there wasn't anything to put.

(16:21):
No.
Didn't know what to type.
So, use your imagination.
I mean, you're probably wrong, but use your imagination.
Excellent.
Now we're going to dive into the book and I'm going to start with the first line of
the novel.
I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me.

(16:44):
That is our opening line.
So, right off the bat, the book opens with a descriptive and gruesome car accident between
a truck and a pedestrian in which our main character, Lo and Ashley, was in the splash
sound.
The splash sound.
That is the most horrifying way to describe.
Listen, I am working on No Sleepier, but the words came out and they felt right.

(17:09):
We went with it.
I mean, it's very descriptive.
I know exactly what you meant.
Yeah.
She is quickly whisked away by Jeremy Crawford to the nearest coffee shop where he helps her
clean off and he gives her the shirt off her back since hers was covered in blood.
What was Loan doing on that street corner?
Well, she was waiting to cross the street to get to a meeting with her agent to discuss

(17:31):
a job opportunity.
Loan is a struggling author and when she finally arrives at the meeting, it turns out to be
with a handsome stranger whose shirt she is wearing.
None other than Jeremy Crawford.
All right.
Yeah.
So their meet cute was a horrifying tragic car accident.

(17:52):
So you see Jeremy's wife, Verity Crawford is a very successful author, but she suffered
a terrible car accident, not the one from the beginning of the book.
And her car accident rendered her incapacitated, but someone needed to finish the last three
books in her series.
And Loan is just the author to do that according to Jeremy.

(18:13):
As I said, Loan is a struggling author.
She's also struggling financially after the passing up her mother whom she was taking
care of, and so Loan accepts this very strange job offer.
Loan moves into Jeremy's home with him, his son, crew and his wife, Verity, who's in a
vegetative state and begins to go through Verity's home office to find anything she

(18:35):
can to try to figure out where the progression of the books was supposed to go or if Verity
had any plans for the books.
Instead she finds Verity's autobiographical manuscript and like a sneaky sneak, she starts
reading.
That's a question.
So is she there to work or is she moving in there to do the writing of the books?

(18:55):
No.
She goes originally, she has no money, so she is planning to get an apartment or something
near Jeremy's house.
But for now she's going to stay for like, let's say a day or two.
And then ends up staying longer.
It's supposed to be temporary.
She's not supposed to be writing the books in Jeremy's house.

(19:18):
But when she goes into Verity's office, she very quickly realizes that this is going to
be a much bigger job than she had originally anticipated.
Gotcha.
Obviously Verity doesn't have, you know, some amazing huge document that outlines the plot
points and the characters and where the direction of the books were supposed to go.
Like that would have been super helpful, but she doesn't find anything.

(19:40):
And actually as far as the book goes, I don't think she ever finds anything.
There is like no mention again of her actually like writing the books.
Okay.
Like I think there is, but it's like so small.
It's like the most unimportant thing is that she was hired to do this job and like, does

(20:02):
she do it?
I don't know.
I've read it twice and I don't remember.
So we'll go with that.
So she finds Verity's manuscript.
I'm not going to lie.
If I found a manuscript, I'd fucking read that too.
100%.
So I'm judging, but like not really judging because secretly I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's
right there.
The woman's in a vegetative state.

(20:23):
What do you mean?
Yeah, I wouldn't sneak into somebody's like bedroom and get their diary, but if it was
sitting out in the open, like I would have a hard time not reading it.
You know?
She found it hidden in the woman's office.
This is a very successful, famous author.

(20:43):
If I found a celebrity's manuscript, I'm fucking reading it.
And if it said what this fucking manuscript says, oh my God, okay, we'll get to that.
So the manuscript reveals a deeply disturbed side of Verity.
It is full of shocking and vile thoughts and confessions about her life, her feelings,

(21:04):
and the passing of her twin daughters, Harper and Chaston.
As she reads more of the manuscript, Lowen becomes obviously increasingly disturbed.
She's sensing that Verity may not be as incapacitated as she appears.
This isn't strictly from the manuscript, but more so from the feeling she gets being in

(21:26):
the house.
She often thinks that she sees movement from Verity when nobody else is paying attention.
At some point, she thinks she sees her at the top of the stairs.
She hears footsteps when nobody should be moving, TVs turn off on their own.
Like a lot's happening that's giving her this impression.

(21:47):
Nobody else seems to feel this way.
So during this time, Lowen and Jeremy are growing much closer.
They're bonding over shared trauma, and Jeremy is clearly in need of comfort and an escape
from his past.
How long has it been since the accident?
Do we know what the timeline is?
How long has his wife been in a vegetative state?

(22:09):
A matter of months.
Okay.
I can't recall how many months.
We'll say within six.
Gotcha.
Somewhere between two to six.
But this is not a long suffering I have been caring for my vegetative state wife for the
last five years.
No, but this guy has gone through it.
Gotcha.

(22:29):
Okay, not necessarily this incident, but they both have trauma.
So despite understanding Verdi's condition, Lowen feels that Verdi is watching her.
And as I said, she even thinks that she sees her move periodically.
There's one point on Lowen's birthday.
It's actually the first time her and Jeremy hook up that she opens her eyes and just like

(22:52):
sees Verdi staring at her from the top of the stairs, which I think I'd just about die.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm going to have you do a little dry read here.
The part I'm sending you, it's not the steamy as part of the book, but it does a really
good job of highlighting Lowen's internal struggle of starting a relationship with like

(23:14):
a technically married man, like one whose wife is like kind of still in the picture,
so to speak.
And her suspicions that all of it is not quite as it seems and it like creates this weird
like competitive dichotomy between Lowen and Verdi that like travels through the book.
So it's a little long whenever you're ready.

(23:36):
I've yet to lower myself onto his mouth because I'm staring at the teeth marks on his headboard.
He cups my breast in his hands and then he begins to slowly part me with his tongue.
I let my head fall back and I moan so loud I have to cover my own mouth.
He seems to like the noise because he does the exact same thing with his tongue again
and the ecstasy that surges through me propels me forward until I'm gripping the headboard.

(23:59):
I open my eyes, my mouth inches away from the headboard.
Inches away from the bite marks Verdi left behind from all the times he had her in the
same position.
When Jeremy's fingers slide down my stomach and accompany his mouth I have nowhere for
my scream to go.
With the position he has me in I'm compelled to lean forward and stifle the sound of my
climax.

(24:20):
I bite down on the wood in front of me.
I can feel Verdi's teeth marks beneath mine.
Different, unaligned with my own.
I bite harder into the wood as I come.
Determined to leave deeper marks than she'd ever did.
Determined to think only of Jeremy and me every time I look at this headboard in the
future.
Okay.
Thoughts, comics?
I mean it very clearly sets up a dynamic and the way that Verdi is the third member

(24:46):
of this relationship obviously.
Yeah.
Like.
Yeah.
It's interesting how Lowen's opinion on Verdi and Jeremy's sexual relationship kind of changes

(25:06):
as the book goes on because when she first finds the manuscript Verdi writes in detail
about hers and Jeremy's sex life.
That's all the smut that you get from Verdi's perspective is like all these crazy sexual
scenes in the book.
And at first Lowen finds it to be too much.

(25:28):
Like almost unbelievable.
And then she feels guilty for reading somebody's personal thoughts.
And then that scene, I mean when Jeremy and Lowen finally get together it's much closer
to like the second half of the book.
And that scene it's like well now it's a competition.
Yeah.
Well and it's weird because she's obviously, I'm assuming we start reading about Verdi

(25:48):
and Jeremy having sex much earlier in the book.
Oh yeah.
So she's been like a voyeur and like a participant in their sex life for a lot longer than she's
been an active participant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like it's not just, she doesn't just see those teeth marks and go oh Verdi must have
bit this headboard.

(26:08):
Like she read about the time that Verdi had been biting the headboard.
Yeah.
She's not assuming she was in the same position.
She knows from Verdi's own recollection that she's in the same position.
Yes.
So speaking of the manuscript, let's go back in time through Verdi's own account.
We learned that Verdi and Jeremy met at a fancy gala party that Verdi was not invited

(26:29):
to.
She found an invitation to the party in the trash of a building that she was cleaning
and stole a dress to get drunk on free booze and I quote, fuck a rich investor.
All right.
There are worse ways to spend a Friday night.
Actually the quote is find a rich investor to fuck.
I don't know how I messed that up but you know.
Same thing.

(26:51):
The two hit it off.
They began dating and moved in together.
Though Verdi didn't actually tell Jeremy that they were living together and that she had
broken her lease until he asked her to move in.
So this became the first instance that the reader sees Verdi use sex as a manipulation
tactic in their relationship.
So to solve the problem of Jeremy getting mad at her for not telling him that they were

(27:15):
living together.
She initiated some crazy sex campaign.
Okay.
I actually think she sat on his face which definitely shut you up.
It's true.
You can't speak when your face is full of vagina.
Well you can try.
Also, if you have gotten away with giving up your lease and moving in and then your partner

(27:40):
invites you to move in, what compels you to be like, actually I moved in quite some time
ago.
What I think when I read that part was why would you say it at all?
What good can come of that?
He's not going to be like, oh my god, really?
You've been living here?
No, that's such a huge motherfucking invasion.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
It was such a dumb thing to say.

(28:01):
But yeah, there's more of that.
Okay.
Verdi from her own manuscript is very obsessed with Jeremy.
Her obsession, it's not just love, it is a really true obsession and it grows into
jealousy when she discovers that she's pregnant.

(28:22):
Jeremy's concern and focus shifts from solely on Verdi to now the health and safety of their
twin daughters.
This is a theme throughout the book.
It starts right off the top and it carries all the way through.
Verdi's self-worth is intrinsically tied to her body and her appearance, so getting
pregnant, let alone with twins and having her body, quote unquote, ruined is something

(28:45):
she never planned or wanted.
She later attempts to abort her babies in the bathroom with a clothes hanger.
She gets into bed looking forward to discovering the miscarriage in the morning and having
Jeremy's sympathy because of it.
That doesn't end up happening.
She does not miscarry her twins.

(29:08):
When she finally has her daughters, she doesn't love them and she resents them for changing
her body and changing her relationship with Jeremy.
Now I'm going to pause here because that whole section that I just said, two very different
issues.
The first one, Verdi's self-worth intrinsically tied to her body, her image, so relatable,

(29:35):
especially when it comes to pregnancy.
As women, we're constantly shown celebrities and models and whoever else have their baby
and walk out of the hospital looking like better than they did nine months ago.
It's just the least realistic thing.
I've been pregnant twice, women have been pregnant way more times than twice, but I

(29:59):
can tell you I will never look the way I did before, Grayson.
It's just not a thing.
It does affect you.
Whether you were the kind of person that had all of your self-worth tied into your body
image or not, it still affects you.
That part I felt was super realistic.
Then she took it to this insane extreme.
This was one of those things where I was like, oh, you just made a list of the craziest things

(30:21):
she could do.
This was at the top of the list.
This ties back into my trigger warnings, my content warnings, if you're dealing with
pregnancy-related issues of any kind, don't read it.
It's a shocking scene.
It comes out of nowhere and it's very close to the beginning of the book.

(30:42):
I'm a little stunned.
It's okay.
I'm going to get there.
I'm mentally pregnant.
I can't remember if that's the most shocking scene, that might be the most shocking scene
for me anyway.
Again, I was six months postpartum when I reread this.
That was the scene where I was like, okay, write a note about how you feel about this

(31:04):
because this is just off the charts.
Again, she has her twins.
She does not love them.
She doesn't really feel a connection to them at all and she really hates and resents them
for the way her relationship with Jeremy has now changed.
She sees them as an obstacle.
At some point, she does start to feel some form of love for Chaston, but not Harper.

(31:30):
Harper is later to believe to have Asperger's, so to be on the autism spectrum.
Verdi then has a premonition that Harper is somehow going to kill Chaston.
When the twins are only a couple months old, she actually tries to kill Harper.
She tries to force Harper to vomit and choke on her own vomit.

(31:53):
She gets interrupted by Jeremy.
He doesn't see what she's doing, but he walks into the room to check on, make sure everything's
okay because the babies are still crying and effectively saves Harper's life.
Okay.
Can I go back a second ago?
You said she did feel love towards Harper.
No, towards Chaston.
Towards Chaston, okay.

(32:14):
Not Harper.
That makes more sense because that was very confused.
Yeah.
So she starts to feel love for Chaston, then she has a premonition that Harper is going
to kill Chaston, so she tries to kill Harper.
Okay.
Luckily, fails.
This whole thing of her feeling affection for one and not the other is not lost on Jeremy.

(32:35):
So Verdi's favoritism for Chaston is not well hidden.
It leads to a bunch of rifts in her relationship with Jeremy.
It actually comes to a head one night when Verdi had made this beautiful dinner for Jeremy.
She made a misfavorite dinner.
She's wearing lingerie under her clothes.
She put the kids to bed so the dinner was a little later so that it was just the two

(32:56):
of them.
She's clearly trying to create a nice evening.
During the meal, Jeremy calls her out for her favoritism and Throse has played a food
across the room, starts a fight.
Not necessarily in the wrong.
I would probably fight about this too.
Verdi definitely is the instigator of this fight.
He marches into the bedroom.

(33:18):
Verdi comes up with a lie to explain why she's only talking about one twin and not the other.
It's one of those parts of the book that you kind of have to suspend your disbelief.
Her reasoning is that the twins are so different and one of them reacts well to praise and

(33:40):
kind of like feeds off of praise and encouragement and the other one is more reclusive and like
does not enjoy public acknowledgement.
So for me, that only explains why you wouldn't do it in front of the twins.
But if you're sitting down to dinner with your husband, your kids are in bed and you're

(34:03):
talking about the milestones that one of them hit and you're only ever talking about one
of them.
There's no real reason not to talk about the other one just because they don't like praise.
They're not there.
So that's one of those little plot holes that I didn't really buy.

(34:25):
But I mean, this whole thing is from Verdi's point of view, right?
Yeah.
Like we're always getting her version of events.
Just saying, if you're going to be like a manipulative master, you got to do better than
that.
That's not a good lie.
I wonder how reliable she is.
I wonder how much you're actually getting like her opinion of Jeremy's response or his

(34:51):
actual response, like how she thinks she manipulated him.
Ding, ding, ding.
Should I jump to the end or should we continue on?
Let's continue on.
Sorry, I didn't mean to spoil.
No, no, no.
That's literally the whole book is who's the reliable narrator?
Is there a reliable narrator?
Which direction are we supposed to believe?

(35:12):
That's the whole thing.
When I said twists and turns, I wasn't kidding.
So Jeremy marches into the bedroom.
Verdi manipulates the situation.
How does she manipulate the situation?
By claiming she's pregnant, obviously.
She uses this opportunity to tell him she's pregnant.

(35:34):
He kind of assumes that the plan for the night was to announce this pregnancy to him and
that's why she did this whole fancy dinner and lingerie and blah, blah, blah, and he
ruined it.
So it kind of worked out in her favor without her actually doing that much of the work.

(35:54):
She had one lie and he put the rest together.
She states that if she doesn't get pregnant in the next week or two, she'll just fake
a miscarriage.
Like, super casual.
Just as easy to fake a miscarriage as it is to fake a pregnancy.
I don't doubt that, but damn, that is harsh.
She does end up getting pregnant and they have their son crew.
So it all worked out.

(36:16):
The relationship between Jeremy and Verdi obviously doesn't get any better after having
another baby.
Kayla's oldest time.
But you do get the feeling that Verdi at least bonded better with crew than she had with
her twins.
So a dramatic, dramatic, that's a new word.

(36:37):
A dramatic point of the book comes when Chastin, who is anaphylactic to nuts, dies at a sleepover
party.
This is the twin that Verdi had affection for.
The kids snuck downstairs after bedtime and took food from the pantry to eat in the bedroom
and Chastin ate something that had nuts in it.

(36:58):
They found her the next morning, not Verdi, the mom of the kid who's hosting the sleepover
party.
Verdi was convinced that Harper had something to do with it and her already terrible relationship
with Harper soured further.
How old were the twins at that point?
Do we know?
They were eight.

(37:20):
In and around.
Yeah.
Six months after Chastin's death, Verdi takes crew and Harper out in the canoe in the lake
behind their house.
She leans forward and tells crew to hold his breath and tips the canoe and then swims to
shore with crew leaving Harper, who does not know how to swim.
Harper's body was found tangled in an old fishing net that had sunk under the area that

(37:43):
they had tipped.
Jeremy is obviously absolutely devastated by the loss of his second daughter and part
of him can't wrap his head around the fact that Verdi didn't put the kids in the life
jackets and didn't try to get both crew and Harper out of the water.

(38:04):
Does he suspect that she murdered her at this point?
Yes.
Okay.
Here is the point where we're going to go into the hot plot spot.
Because I so aptly named it, I can't actually say the words, but I like that it rhymes.
All right.

(38:25):
We have a nice sound based on your new designation for this section.
We'll play that now.
If you don't want to be spoiled and you want to go read this traumatizing book without
any further spoilers, please go ahead.
We'll see you next time.
Okay.

(38:46):
Yeah.
So yeah, this is the section in which I will be ruining the ending and not just ruining
the ending, but possibly decimating it with my own opinion.
So if you don't want to hear it, turn it off.
So to summarize, Chaston, allergic to nuts, died of an anaphylactic reaction at a sleepover

(39:13):
party, Verity being insane, thought Harper somehow had a hand in that.
Six months after the death of Chaston, Verity takes crew and Harper on the canoe, on the
canoe, in the canoe, on the lake behind the house, purposely tips the canoe and gets crew

(39:34):
out of the water.
Again, I'm just going to say the part that gets to me is more so the life jackets, less
the not trying to get both of them out of the water.
I can't imagine it would be easy to get any kid out of the water who's like panicking

(39:55):
and like swimming to shore with them, let alone an eight year old and a four year old.
I would try.
The part that I haven't read this, but the part that gets to me is she did it on purpose
and said, no, I meant because I meant from Jeremy's point of view, he was caught up

(40:17):
on the life jackets and the you didn't try to get both.
And as a mom, I would try to get both 100%.
But as a mom, I'd also have my kids in life jackets.
So the life jacket part is the one that's like sticking in my head in terms of like,
maybe it wasn't intentional.
It would be the life jacket.
Gotcha.
And then, obviously, if you intentionally tip a canoe, that's going to be the part I'm

(40:40):
going to think about.
But, you know, wow, thanks, Alexis.
Okay, so Jeremy questions Verity about exactly what happened at the lake.
I mean, the police question Verity too, but Jeremy's interrogation was way more intense
than the police.
Verity reiterates what she already said.
Drew actually told Jeremy that his mom told him to hold his breath.

(41:07):
And so Jeremy asked her, why did you tell him to hold his breath before the canoe fell
in?
And Verity said, I didn't.
I told him to hold his breath as the canoe was tipping.
She also blames Harper for tipping the boat.
Like she says Harper leaned to the side and the boat flipped.
Which I thought was just like.

(41:28):
Well, is it overkill?
You've killed her.
Did you need to also blame her?
That's kind of what I'm feeling.
It's also like she's an eight year old.
I feel like you can counterbalance that pretty quickly.
Anyway.
So Jeremy questions Verity about what happened.
Verity can't sleep after this.

(41:49):
She ends up going to her office and she finishes her manuscript.
And the way she finishes it is basically by saying she has nothing left now that she's
lost Jeremy.
He knows that she's lost Jeremy.
He doesn't believe her.
And maybe she will just go get in her car and drive into a tree.
At some point in Lowen's suspicions, she had installed a camera in Verity's room without

(42:11):
her knowing.
One day while Lowen is in the office drinking her coffee, she sees Verity on the monitor
on her hands and knees on the floor.
Obviously not incapacitated.
And when Lowen screams rightfully so, Verity is seen scrambling to get back on the bed.

(42:35):
By Lowen.
Only Lowen.
Lowen tells Jeremy what she saw.
Jeremy doesn't believe her.
Just no trust here.
So Lowen shows him Verity's manuscript.
And not a minute too soon if you ask me.

(42:57):
What took so long?
Why did she wait?
Why did she read this so slowly?
How did she put it down?
I have so many questions.
She managed to read this.
She managed to develop an entire relationship with this man.
In the time it took her to read this manuscript.
I think I could have held my P for the entire time it would have taken me to read this manuscript.

(43:19):
So once you get to the first attempted murder of an infant, I think you're like either raising
a flag or finishing what happens.
Yeah.
Especially because she knows at that point that the twins are dead.
Both of them.
Yeah.
Okay.
Lowen.
Lowen.
You are the sorority girl who like loses her virginity and then is like, I'm gonna go

(43:39):
check out that weird noise in the attic.
Like.
Yes.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's insane.
The suspension of disbelief has to happen here.
Or maybe not everyone is like me.
Like maybe some people would just read a sex scene that somebody wrote about them and their
husband and that person would just put the book away.

(44:01):
I would be like, what happened next?
Very intrusive.
Don't invite me over.
Okay.
So again, Verity finally shows Jeremy the manuscript and he completely loses it.
I'm assuming he didn't read the whole thing because it took Lowen fucking forever to read
it and it couldn't have taken him 30 minutes.

(44:21):
He probably skipped to the end.
He goes in confronts Verity.
Like marches into her room where she's like lying on a hospital bed and starts yelling
at her telling her he's gonna call the police blah blah blah.
She comes clean.
She decides to cut the bullshit.
Wait, she just is like, yep.

(44:42):
Yeah.
You're right.
I was lying.
I was like, yeah.
She, for the first time in months, and again, I don't know how you pretend to not be there
for months.
Like I don't know how you don't make a mistake.
Yeah.
Like, like Lowen was actively trying to throw her so she would like drop things or like make

(45:07):
loud noises or whatever and Verity, calm, cool, didn't react at all.
And they don't explain this.
It's not like, oh, I was getting up and dosing myself with sedatives.
No, because that's the only way that makes sense.
Yeah.
And they never said it.
No.
So again, and listen, I am a jumpy person.

(45:27):
If you close like a fringe next to me, I will fly.
It's when Eli sneezes next to me, I like scream.
But there's a, there's, there's something in between me and Verity.
Yeah.
And I assume that I assume most people reside somewhere in the middle.
I have a lot of questions about the faking the vegetative state.

(45:51):
Like was there a catheter or was she just like peeing herself?
You know what?
I don't know.
Of all the things she went into detail on, that wasn't one of them, which I mean, we're
really missing out here.
That would be really important information.
There is a point where she says that like it was sometimes humiliating.

(46:13):
I, I mean, that could mean anything.
But I'm assuming it also means that somebody may have had to wipe her butt.
Okay.
I might be focusing on the wrong details, but like this is all I can think about right
now is the colossal bag.
I don't know.
I think I told you my catheter of this story though, didn't I?

(46:36):
Nope.
I don't know if it's something I want on the podcast, but do you want to hear it?
I mean, now.
Okay.
Ask me, edit this in and then ask me how I feel about it.
Okay.
Okay.
So like backing up with some information here.

(46:57):
When I had Grayson, he was breached.
I didn't get my all natural dream birth with like the hip-note birthing techniques.
My vagina was not a flower.
I had to have a C-section.
They gave me a spinal.
The spinal did not work.
They started cutting.
I was not frozen, panic ensued.
I was put under general.
Fine.
Woke up in another room, was handed my beautiful baby.

(47:19):
It was great.
I mean, it wasn't great, but like he was fine.
All is well.
So fast forward three years.
I'm ready to have Nash go in for my C-section, which I had to have because apparently I was
having a giant baby and my C-section scar wasn't thick enough to withstand natural birth
for a baby that size.

(47:40):
So another C-section.
This time I chose not to have a spinal.
I was just going to be put out.
Fine.
When I had Grayson and the spinal didn't work, they put me under general and then they gave
me the catheter.
So I didn't, I wasn't awake for it.
I wasn't there.
When I chose to go under general with Nash, the anesthesiologist did not like my choice.

(48:06):
She made that very clear.
And it almost felt like she was making decisions to punish me for my choice.
So picture it.
Okay.
10 months pregnant.
Lying.
Lying, naked on a table.

(48:27):
I'm what?
I was going to say, and you were so happy about the being pregnant.
You so loved that last, I mean, three months, but particularly that last month.
Pregnancy is not for everyone.
I am generally, generally, I am a peach.
Pregnant Ricky.
Not the same person.

(48:49):
Just don't talk to me for the 10 months and we will still be friends at the end of this.
So I'm very pregnant.
I am eager to not be pregnant.
I am lying naked on a table with a lot of people around me, more than the average person.
Because for whatever reason, they need multiple people if they're going to put you under general.

(49:09):
Fine.
I'm asking the anesthesiologist to just put me out already.
It's getting bad.
There are so many people coming in, going that door is swinging wide open.
Just put me out.
I don't need to be here for any of this.
And she keeps telling me they want to wait until the very last possible second to put

(49:31):
me out because general anesthesia can cross the placenta barrier.
Fine.
One of the people in the room goes, okay, I'm going to put your catheter in now.
And I was like, I am fully awake and not frozen.
What do you mean?
And she goes, yeah, you're going to feel a pinch.
I don't think she knows what a pinch is.

(49:53):
I, okay.
On top of the fact that it was fucking painful.
That might be the single most humiliating moment of my life.
Can you fucking believe that?
You couldn't wait five seconds to have me put out first.
They literally put me out right after.

(50:15):
Like it was like catheters in and mask is on.
Yeah.
No, that's a...
I was so mad.
I was so mad and so embarrassed.
And I still like, I'm turning red talking about it, not because I'm angry, but because
I know what it feels like when somebody has to hold your vagina in a specific way to put

(50:41):
a catheter in it.
Now imagine doing it while you're faking the whole thing.
Okay.
She was knocked out from the accident originally, but I'm assuming a catheter is something that
has to be changed periodically.
So yeah, no.
How do you not flinch?
How do you not flinch?
No.

(51:01):
Okay.
I don't know.
Anyway, that's my catheter story.
I never ever want to have one ever again.
And also if you ever have the option to be put out first, you know, say yes.
Just say yes.
Okay, back to Verdi.
I don't know where I am.

(51:22):
And so Verdi comes clean.
That's where we've been talking about this one sentence for a long time.
Verdi finally snaps out of it and she's like, you're right.
I've been lying.
Jeremy, now believing that Verdi had murdered Harper, kills Verdi in the manner that Verdi
had attempted on Harper when she was a baby.
He forces her to vomit and choke on her own vomit.

(51:45):
Lowen is a witness to the crime and they agreed just to never speak of it again.
I mean, what else is there to say at that point?
It was actually Lowen's idea of how to do it.
She like, he was going to kill her.
And then it was, it was, you know, he started to smother her and Lowen was like, they're

(52:08):
going to find particles from the pillow in her system.
I don't know.
And then she remembered the manuscript and kind of poetic justice, I guess.
I don't know.
I mean, Verdi is obviously not a great person from what we've seen based on the manuscript
that is supposedly from her own pen.

(52:30):
So I'm going to hold back some judgment because maybe they were about to learn that that's
not the case at all.
But I'm like, even still, that seems like a really intense horror way to kill somebody.
You think she killed your daughter?
You think she never loved your other daughter who also died?
And now she's been pretending to be in a vegetative state?

(52:53):
I mean, I'm not saying you, I'm not saying you should kill her, but I mean, I think I
don't know what I would do.
Actually, I would be fucking running for the hills.
I'm sorry.
Hang on a second.
I have been living in a house with somebody who has been able to pretend to be in a vegetative
state for months.
Yeah, no, I'm out of there.
You scoop up your son and you get the fuck out of there.

(53:14):
Fuck out of there.
She now owns that house.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
I'm gonna write her own books.
I'm out.
Yeah, I would be out of there so fucking fast.
And I'd be calling the goddamn police.
Nobody thinks to call the cops.
Well, it's like, take that manuscript, hand it off to the police, and be like, go collect
the faking vegetative state for her.

(53:34):
So the way Jeremy gets Verity to come out of her vegetative state is by saying, I'm
going to call the cops and give them your manuscript.
Just call the cops.
Yeah.
You couldn't avoid him killing her.
Just do it.
I don't think he cares to avoid killing her, honestly, but besides the point.
So they agree never to speak of it again.

(53:54):
They literally, they're like, okay, we're going to go to bed.
And in the morning, we're going to pretend to find her and then we'll call the cops.
She choked on her vomit, which I guess in theory is not a bad plan.
Time of death will be ruled whenever it was, but you don't know what time somebody choked,
and it doesn't necessarily mean somebody else was there.
So yeah, I guess that works.

(54:17):
The book then jumps ahead a little bit.
Lowen is now pregnant with Jeremy's baby.
So they're together and they have moved elsewhere.
They go back to the house to clean it out because they're putting it up for sale.
It's at this time that Lowen finds Verity's hiding place beneath a loose floorboard and
found some pictures and a knife and a letter addressed to Jeremy.

(54:40):
Okay.
So Lowen, again, being a sneaky sneak, reads the letter.
All right.
Well, I mean, she's complicit in her murder, I feel like she's all in, like reading the
reading the letter.
So this explains why she was on her hands and knees when Verity was on her hands and
knees.
It was, she was playing around with her hidey hole.

(55:01):
So that's ended so dirty.
That's not what I meant.
Okay, you know, smutty side up.
Okay.
In the letter, Verity explains that the disturbing manuscript that Lowen had discovered was never
intended to be taken as truth.
She claims it was a writing exercise suggested by her publisher to practice creating an unreliable

(55:27):
narrator because all of Verity's books are written from the bad guy's perspective, which
you nailed.
Verity insists that she wrote the manuscript as a purely fictional account, exaggerating
and fabricating horrific events to improve her craft as a writer.

(55:47):
Verity expresses that she never hated her children.
She loved them deeply.
She completely contradicts basically everything that the manuscript claims.
She goes on to recount specific incidences that she was writing about and what had actually
happened.
So for example, so she goes back and talks about the day after Harper had died.

(56:11):
So the day after the canoe flipped and Harper's body was found.
According to the letter, Jeremy had found the manuscript and read it and totally lost
his mind.
Right, Felicia, in my opinion.
And when Verity found him reading the manuscript in her office, he turned around and attempted

(56:35):
to kill her by strangling her.
Jeremy, while strangling Verity, realized that crew would be left without a mom and
a dad if he killed her that way because he would go to prison.
So instead, he put her unconscious body in the passenger seat of her car and drove into
a tree.
Then he moved her body into the driver's seat and walked home.

(56:55):
She explains that at some point while in the hospital, she woke up but that her fear of
Jeremy led her to pretend to be incapacitated while she came up with a plan to escape with
crew.
After reading this letter, what do you think Lowen does?
I mean, I, a reasonable person, I think would GTFO.

(57:19):
That would be nice.
And try and make some, make some calm, collected decisions, really figure out who you believe,
maybe talk to somebody, get some more details.
But I'm guessing that she went and talked to Jeremy.
You'd be wrong.
She destroys it.
Oh, oh good.
Just sets it on fire.

(57:41):
Yeah, option C. Yeah, she just destroys it.
Apparently she like, I mean apparently, what am I talking about?
According to the book, she ate parts of the letter to ensure that it could never be found.
She ate parts of the letter, like physically in her system.
Like, I mean sweetheart, it's like a get a lighter.
Nothing could be found from Ash.

(58:02):
I should tell the toilet.
What are you talking about?
This is a house that you're selling.
There are so many possibilities.
You don't live here.
Jeremy doesn't live here.
You ate the letter?
Whatever.
A bit excessive, but maybe she was panicking, which I assume she was probably panicking.
So yeah, so Lowen, instead of speaking to Jeremy, instead of running away, instead of

(58:23):
calling the cops, forges her own path.
And that's where the book ends.
So the question is, do you believe the manuscript or do you believe the letter?
I have a hard time believing that in a hospital, she didn't feel safe enough to say, this dude

(58:44):
tried to kill me based on a fake writing exercise.
Get me my son, we are not safe.
Like it's not like she woke up in their house with a nurse and he was in charge of everything.
Maybe she felt that he had a good argument for her being responsible for Harper's death.

(59:04):
And that if she said that she wasn't safe in her house with this man who tried to strangle
me, he would turn around and say, well, she killed my daughter.
I mean, do you think that because the character's name is very Colleen Hoover wants us to think
that she was actually telling the truth at the end?
In the manuscript or in the letter?
In the letter.

(59:25):
So if she did, she didn't do a very good job.
And I will tell you why.
I am team manuscript for one, count it one, huge plot hole.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Verity was faking being in a vegetative state.

(59:46):
Lohan convinced Jeremy that Verity was faking it by showing him the manuscript.
When Jeremy read the manuscript, he lost his shit and then went and confronted Verity.
If what Verity wrote in the letter is true, which is that Jeremy already read the manuscript
and attempted to kill her, then he wouldn't have lost his shit when Lohan showed him

(01:00:10):
the manuscript.
Okay.
I can see that.
Yeah.
No, I can see that.
I could also see, oh, just in case she wasn't lying 10 minutes ago when she told me she
saw her getting up and walking around, this is a good excuse to go in, lose my shit.
And if she is in a vegetative state, I can kill her out of anger.
I guess, but like, don't you think he would have believed Lohan's accounts if he had already

(01:00:34):
read a manuscript that talked about how Verity wasn't the person that he thought she was?
Maybe.
Like he was trusting this woman in a vegetative state who had clearly not been the person
he thought she was.
She was clearly capable of anything.
She was upset enough that her daughter died, that she believed the other twin was responsible,
and then murdered that twin.
Yeah.

(01:00:54):
All right.
Anyway, I'm team manuscript.
Okay.
From what I gather off the internet, I think most people are team manuscripts.
Well, I mean, it's much easier to believe the thing that you were fed for 90% of a book
than like what you hear at the very end.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just an absolutely insane letter at the end that took up like an entire chapter.
It's like the opposite of the Kaiser's Osa thing in usual suspects.

(01:01:17):
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh, great.
Great reference.
One of the best movies ever.
Yeah.
I love that movie so much.
Yeah.
Except that one was done so well.
So well.
All right.
So I will say apparently Colleen Hoover has written an additional chapter to the end of
this book, and apparently it just makes the book so much worse.

(01:01:39):
Okay.
So don't read it.
I did not read it, but I did try to find it.
And in my searches, all I got was people being like, this chapter has no business being part
of this book.
It taints Jeremy in a weird way that like isn't necessary because he's already morally
ambiguous.
So it apparently just kind of ruins the book.

(01:02:01):
Okay.
Yeah.
Not my personal opinion because I didn't read it, but I'm just giving you what was
handed to me.
All right.
So I just, I also have to say, I went to Goodread.
This book got a 4.3 out of five stars with over three million ratings.
Wow.
Yeah.
So by all standards, it's a very well liked book.

(01:02:23):
And I found four reviews, two five star and two one star, that I just thought were in
hilarious and I have to share them with you.
Excellent.
So Carol says, I can't even begin to explain how good this book was.
I can only say that I started reading it last night and couldn't stop until 4am.
And only because I made myself stop.
Yeah, it really was that good.

(01:02:43):
And even now that I finished it and it's the next day, I don't feel bad about it.
A says, what is the sign of a brilliant book?
When you reach the end completely baffled and questioning everything.
When you have to flip back and look for the clues you might have missed.
When you want to shove the book in your friend's face and demand they read it now in all of
it.
This is my definition of verity.

(01:03:04):
Maddie says, I mean, if you like sex scenes drier than a biology textbook, sure, go off
I guess.
Maddie, I think we might be friends.
And Rachel says, if the protagonist was a spice, she'd be flour.

(01:03:24):
So Alexis, busy foster mom and producer, would you have time to read this book?
Okay, I don't think time is a factor for me because let's be clear.
Hey Rana.
I read an excessive amount of terrible things and really good things, but also terrible
things.
I do not think I'm going to read this book for many, many reasons.

(01:03:49):
The first being like this is not what I have signed up for when I go to my Smuddy Romances.
Like we'll get to it at some point, but I have read a like a romance novel between serial
killers and there is murder all over the place and that book is fucking amazing.
Like everyone is a little bit morally gray and it's fine and it's weird.

(01:04:14):
I actually agree.
I actually really agree.
I really, I did actually enjoy this book.
Did I think it was amazing?
No, but I thought it was a good book.
But again, I have to go back to the fact that I read it not knowing it was a romance book.
When I want a psychological thriller, I want a psychological thriller and I know what I'm
signing up for.
And this definitely reads more like a psychological thriller than a romance book.

(01:04:37):
It's kind of a psychological thriller with just like sex scenes thrown in wherever.
And because of the structure of the book, she can kind of do that.
Yeah.
Specifically with the manuscript.
But I do agree that like it's not really what I go for when I'm looking for the romance
genre.
No.
So generally, I have not read anything by Colleen Humber.

(01:05:00):
Obviously, you know, there's a lot of book talk loving on her.
There were a lot of things that were recommended.
And I looked at it ends with us.
And I was just like, this does not feel like a vibe I am interested in.
And so I didn't start it, but it was always kind of one of those.

(01:05:22):
Eventually I'll get to one of them, like ugly love or one of the ones that, you know, everybody
is talking about.
And then I heard this story and I'm going to just say right off the top, I have not
done a deep dive.
I don't have a fax, but allegedly Colleen Hoover's teenage or like young adult son has

(01:05:43):
sexually abused or sexually harassed more than one woman.
And she has defended him, a woman who made her entire career based on domestic, like
a book about domestic violence.
Whoa.
And I'm just like, oh, the hypocrisy is real.
So I don't know anything about that.

(01:06:06):
Yeah.
This is the first time hearing of this.
Interesting.
I think it was a couple of years ago, but it came back up during the whole, there's a
timer on the light in my room and it just turned off.
So everything got really dark.
That's hilarious.
It's my, you should stop reading and go to bed reminder.

(01:06:27):
Oh, it's specifically for your romance.
It's literally so that I, it's like, hey, dummy, it's late.
You should probably start thinking about bed.
Hilarious.
Okay.
So let's get back.
So I was disinclined to read Colleen Hoover beforehand and then in the promotion of it
ends with us and all the other controversy with, you know, Justin Baldini and Blake

(01:06:50):
Lively and all those things, this came out as well because, you know, obviously in that
whole thing, Colleen Hoover was very much on the Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds side.
And Justin Baldini was like, this is a movie about domestic violence and we should be talking
about that.
And the fact that it also came out that she was like, not just brushing that aside, but

(01:07:12):
like had been actively protecting somebody who was allegedly guilty of that sort of a
crime.
It just, it left a like bad taste in my mouth.
So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to full stop, skip on the Colleen Hoover.
That's really interesting.
This is the first I'm hearing of it.
I had no idea about this.
I will be doing some research, but I have to say as well, I'm also not interested really

(01:07:37):
in reading her other books at the moment.
And not because of this, I mean, now because of the story, but not because previously because
of the story.
And I just find that you're right, like the sub topics in these books, not what I'm going
for when I want a good romance novel.
Yeah.
I mean, and again, I haven't read it.
So I could be wrong, but like the concept of reading a romance novel where you are watching

(01:08:01):
someone fall in love with their abuser holds absolutely no fucking interest for me, like
zero.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Honestly.
So, so like I said, I have tried to read it ends with us multiple times.
So like I said, I have read or sorry, I have tried to read it ends with us multiple times.

(01:08:21):
I didn't get far enough into the book, any of the times that I started to even know that
the book was about domestic violence.
Oh, wow.
Like I don't think I got past chapter six, chapter five.
I don't even know the book is utterly destroyed.
If you saw the condition that this book is in, you would be livid.

(01:08:43):
I think the ocean got to it at one point.
It is just mangled.
It looks like I've read it 77 times and not one less.
But I have, I did not even know that it was about domestic violence until the movie.
And I have not seen the movie.
It's just what everyone was talking about.
I, yeah.
So the book wasn't for me.
Don't think I'm going to try for a fourth.

(01:09:04):
Certainly not after what you just said, but yeah.
So I guess the net of this is if you're a big Colleen Hoover fan, this might not be
your podcast.
I mean, I will try another one if it comes down to that.
But first I want to know about this defending the sexual assault issues because that's a
hard stop for me.
With regards, I mean with most people, I'm sure, but with regards to this book specifically,

(01:09:26):
it's also, people are talking a lot about how this book is so not her style.
Like it's very much out of her comfort zone.
It's very much not in line with the rest of her books.
And like, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because again, I couldn't get
into the only one of her other books that I tried to read.
But I don't think this is a bad book.
I really did like the book.

(01:09:48):
It just, the only reason I'm doing it for this episode is because it was the first one
I read.
It was a shock to the system.
I can say I have not read another psychological thriller romance novel since.
I think the idea of a psychological thriller romance novel sounds great to me because I
do venture outside of the smut zone and read, you know, other things.

(01:10:11):
And I like the idea of combining that, like getting, you know, a little smut reward in
the middle of anything else.
But I have one on my to read list that I'm going to start next.
Okay.
And I'm sure you already know what it is.
I was going to say, is it the housemaid?
No.
Oh.
I think we've talked about it though.

(01:10:32):
Have we?
We did not.
Okay.
I'm going to keep it.
Never mind.
Okay.
But yeah, I mean, honestly, outside of all these other things, the like child abuse piece
I have a really, really hard time with.
It was insane.
And I mean, I think part of that is just like the, the life that I lead and dealing with
kids who've actively like gone through trauma makes it, I think even a little bit harder,

(01:10:58):
but I think anybody would have trouble reading about a child, like child abuse.
Everyone in their right mind would have a hard time getting through some of these chapters.
Then you pile on anybody who's ever experienced some form of pregnancy trauma or fertility
trauma or anything, child loss trauma, anything.
And it just, it just goes up exponentially.

(01:11:20):
Then you factor in the fact that, yeah, you're dealing with foster kids.
Like you're dealing with a foster care system and that's trauma in and of itself.
And these kids come to you with an even a level of trauma that you don't even understand
as a person.
Yeah.
And this is all just like in a book.
It's a lot.
I mean, it's interesting because I have read books where the protagonist was abused and

(01:11:43):
we go back into abuse.
And for some reason when it's coming from that first person perspective, it doesn't
hit me in the same way.
No.
And maybe it's that I can't read the perspective of somebody who is abusive.
Like maybe that's, I totally agree.
And honestly, it's callous.
Like the way it was written for this book.
It was, I mean, and it was supposed to be that was her character.

(01:12:06):
But it's, it's, you know, you're reading somebody's words, their own words with like no remorse,
no feelings whatsoever, openly talking about what they're attempting or what they want
to do as if it's, you know, I'm going to go make a coffee.
Like it's nothing.
It was hard.
It was really hard.
Postpartum Ricky is a nut as without this book.

(01:12:29):
This book just made me absolutely insane when I read it again.
Yeah, I could see that.
All right.
Well, let's see.
Let's see what everyone else thinks for sure.
Do you have a little taste for us for next week?
I do.
And unsurprisingly, we are going in a very different direction.
Shocker.
We are very, very close to the Christmas holiday and this weirdly late Hanukkah this year.

(01:12:55):
Yeah.
And so I thought it would be fun for us to cover a straight up Christmas romance with
some of like the most fun steamy smut that I've read in quite some time in an opposite
to tract romantic comedy.
The adult children of two members of music's royalty come together to try and reunite their

(01:13:18):
parents band on Christmas Eve and their adventure is being documented for a live to air reality
TV series.
Okay.
So much of this resonates with your real life.
I mean, we're going to get into that.
There's a lot.
There's a lot there.
A lot to unpack.
But like if your book this week was us like sitting in a creaky, creepy haunted mansion.

(01:13:43):
Next week we're going to be sitting next to like a Christmas tree with some cider, maybe
some Muldwine.
We're going to Rockefeller Center, man.
They're going to be a ray of cookies, they're going to be twinkly lights everywhere, where
your fuzziest pajamas and I promise it will be like lovely good time.

(01:14:03):
Good.
I need that.
Next week I'm wearing a Santa hat.
I'm holding you to that now.
We need it and we'll take pictures.
Excellent.
I'll be there hat on and ready to go.
Amazing.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Of course.
We'll see you all next week.
How do we end this?
We just say bye?
I think so.
Okay.
Bye.

(01:14:23):
Bye.
In today's episode I reviewed Verity by Colleen Hoover, published by Grand Central Publishing
and Imprint of Hachette Book Group.
Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover.