The short verdict: Verity is worth reading if you like dark, twisty thrillers and you're fine with explicit sex and disturbing violence. Read it before the movie if you want to make up your own mind about the ending. If you only care about the twist, the movie gets you there in two hours.
This review is spoiler-free until the clearly marked spoiler section near the end.
Strengths and weaknesses at a glance
What works
- A book inside a book: the hidden manuscript is the creepiest part, and you read it the way Lowen does
- An ending built to be argued about
- Plain, simple prose that's easy to get through
- Just over 300 pages
What doesn't
- Very dark material, including violence involving children
- Explicit, on-the-page sex scenes, which some readers love and others find a distraction
- Thin characters, and a plot that needs you to stop asking practical questions
- It's part thriller, part romance, so readers who want only one of those may get both
What it's about (no spoilers)
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer who's just lost her mother and is running out of money. Then she gets an offer that seems too good to be true. Verity Crawford, a hugely successful thriller author, has been badly hurt in a car crash and can't finish her bestselling series. Her husband, Jeremy, hires Lowen to write the last books.
To do the job, Lowen moves into the Crawfords' remote lake house to go through Verity's notes. Verity is there too, unresponsive, in the bedroom upstairs. The family has already been through a lot of loss.
In Verity's office, Lowen finds an unpublished manuscript. It's Verity's autobiography, and it's not the kind of thing anyone was supposed to read.
That's as far as we'll go.
Why it's so easy to keep reading
The manuscript is the engine. Lowen is reading something she shouldn't, in the house of the woman who wrote it, while that woman lies a few rooms away. Every time she goes back to it, you learn something worse, and you're left wondering whether it's even true.
The writing doesn't get in the way. Hoover made her name in contemporary romance, and Verity was her move into thriller territory. The sentences are simple and the story moves.
It has clearly found its audience. Hoover self-published Verity in December 2018, and Grand Central Publishing picked it up in 2021 after a surge in popularity. It won the British Book Award for Pageturner in 2023, and on Goodreads it averages 4.28 stars from more than four million ratings.
The honest weaknesses and content warnings
The characters are mostly there to serve the plot. Lowen is a lens more than a person, and Jeremy is a mystery for most of the book, partly on purpose.
The plot also asks a lot of you. Plenty of things only work if nobody in the house acts sensibly. If plot holes ruin a book for you, this one may frustrate you.
It's also two books at once. Verity is usually filed as a psychological thriller, but it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the romance category, and the relationship between Lowen and Jeremy takes up a lot of the page. If you came for pure suspense, the romance may feel like a detour.
Then there's how much the manuscript piles on. Slate's Rebecca Onion, who thinks the new movie beats the book, pointed to the novel's "near-compulsive proliferation of details." The film cuts several of the most shocking ones.
Is Verity too dark?
For a lot of readers, yes. This is not a cozy thriller, and it isn't a clean read. The manuscript describes a mother's violence against her own babies in detail, and a child's death is central to the story. The book also has explicit sex scenes. Common Sense Media calls it "an erotic thriller for adults" and rates it 17+.
It isn't horror, and nothing supernatural happens. The darkness is in what people do to each other, and in the fact that the book never fully tells you who did what.
If violence involving children or graphic sex is a hard no for you, skip it. If you're unsure, the movie is a softer way in, since it cuts several of the book's most extreme details.
Should you read Verity before the movie?
The film, directed by Michael Showalter and starring Anne Hathaway as Verity, Dakota Johnson as Lowen and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy, opened in US theaters on 2 October 2026. It's rated R.
Here's the simple rule:
- Read it first if you want the full manuscript and you want to decide for yourself what really happened. The book keeps you inside Lowen's head and leaves the big question open. Hoover told ScreenRant the movie should leave you with "the same feeling" as the book, but "I didn't need an exact copy."
- Watch it first if you just want the twist, or if the darkest material is a dealbreaker. The film drops several of the book's most extreme details.
Reviews of the movie have been mixed. Rotten Tomatoes listed 33% of critics' reviews as positive at the time of writing, though some critics, like Slate's, think it improves on the book.
Our call: if you're a reader, read it first. The manuscript is the best part of Verity, and it works best on the page, where you read it alone, like Lowen does.
Spoiler section: the ending, and what the movie changed
Stop here if you haven't read the book or seen the movie.
The ending, explained
Lowen catches Verity moving and realizes she's been faking her condition. At Lowen's urging, Jeremy kills Verity, and they make it look like she choked in her sleep. Months later, Lowen is pregnant with Jeremy's child. While clearing out the house, she finds a letter from Verity hidden under the floorboards.
The letter says the manuscript was fiction. Verity calls it a writing exercise, written from a villain's point of view, and says she never hurt her children. It also says Jeremy caused the car crash after reading the manuscript, and that Verity pretended to be brain damaged because she was afraid of him.
So which is true, the manuscript or the letter? The book never says. That's the point, and it's why people still argue about it.
What the movie changed
These are changes the film's director and reviewers who compared both versions describe directly:
- The ending. In the book, Lowen destroys the letter. In the movie, she keeps it. Showalter told ScreenRant, "when the movie ends, that letter is still in her pocket." The film also adds a closing clip of Verity talking about tricking her audience.
- A missing child. In the book, the Crawfords have three children, twin girls and a boy. The movie cuts one of the twins, along with her death.
- The worst manuscript details. The book's manuscript includes an attempt to abort the twins. The movie leaves it out.
- Lowen's sleepwalking. It's a recurring thread in the book that makes Lowen unreliable. The movie drops it and gives her vaping, pills and drinking instead.
- How Verity dies. In the book, she's found dead in the house. In the movie, Jeremy and Lowen sink her body in the lake, and there's an added police interview afterward.
The ending on screen nearly went further. Showalter told Variety that one version had Lowen put on sunglasses and lean back in the car, as if she were the real villain, then cut to Verity opening her eyes as she sinks in the lake. Test audiences, a mix of people who had and hadn't read the book, weren't ready for that. They wanted Lowen shaken by what she'd done. "We realized the audience is Lowen," he said.
What to read next
- The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, if you want another twisty thriller set in a rich family's house. Here's our Housemaid review.
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, if you want a marriage thriller about who's telling the truth, with sharper writing.
FAQ
Is Verity worth reading? Yes, if you like dark, twisty thrillers and can handle explicit content. Skip it if violence involving children or graphic sex is a dealbreaker.
Should I read Verity before watching the movie? Read first if you want the full manuscript and an open ending to decide for yourself. Watch first if you only want the twist.
Is Verity the book better than the movie? It depends on what you want. Slate argues the movie is better because it trims the book's excess. Readers who love the ambiguity may prefer the book.
Is Verity spicy? Yes. It has explicit, on-the-page sex scenes, both in Verity's manuscript and between Lowen and Jeremy in the present. Common Sense Media describes it as an erotic thriller for adults.
Is Verity a romance or a thriller? Both. It's a psychological thriller with a romance running through it, and it was even nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the romance category. Hoover wrote mostly romance before it, and it shows.
Can a 14 year old read Verity? It's written for adults, and we wouldn't hand it to a 14 year old. Common Sense Media rates the book 17+ for graphic sex and detailed violence, including against children, and the movie is rated R.
Is Verity a hard book to read? The writing is easy. The content is the hard part, because the manuscript describes violence against babies in detail.
Do I need to read anything before Verity? No. It's a standalone novel, not part of a series.
Is the Verity movie ending different from the book? Yes. In the book, Lowen destroys Verity's letter. In the movie, she keeps it, and an extra scene leaves the truth even more open.
How long is Verity? Just over 300 pages, depending on the edition.
Two hours in a theater, or a few evenings with the book? If you want to judge the letter for yourself, read it first. Read First helps with that part: reading before you scroll.