Atlantic County Library System

UnCovered review by Collette Jones, ACLS Egg Harbor City Branch Manager

Self-published in 2018, VERITY is a psychological thriller that follows the journey of writer Lowen Ashleigh as she travels to Vermont to work as the new co-writer for a popular series of books written by the renowned author Verity Crawford. Written from the perspectives of both Verity and Lowen, VERITY explores violence, trauma, and truth. This storyline is a romantic, suspenseful, thriller filled with chilling details and fascinating sick twisted turns. Disturbing, horrifying, and unsettling at times to read through nonetheless, your attention to see what happens next will consume you as a reader. It is a well-written story in the first person narrative that plays with genres and is a bit creepy; definitely manipulatively and psychotic. The story is unsettling and clearly involves a lot of secrets: death of a loved one, abuse, gory details. It is uninhibited and can be described as an immersive reading experience. I was pushed past my comfort zone of reading this just as a romance novel. The book has emotional trigger moments. While reading the statements and story you can feel yourself responding to the events being described as terrifying while understanding love is in bloom.  

In VERITY, Lowen is a writer who is offered the opportunity to complete the last three novels of a bestselling book series because the author, Verity Crawford, is unable to do so for medical reasons. When Lowen moves into the Crawford house to go over Verity’s notes, she sees that Verity has been left largely unresponsive after a car accident. She also learns that Verity’s two twin daughters died in the months before the accident. Lowen soon finds herself attracted to Jeremy, Verity’s husband, and she also discovers an autobiographical manuscript written by Verity, which contains dark secrets about Verity’s life. The unraveling of this story is chilling. This is not a usual romance novel like Colleen Hoover captures.