Verity Book Club Questions: 20 Discussion Questions for Colleen Hoover's Thriller

The Short Version

Verity, Colleen Hoover’s 2018 psychological thriller, is a natural book club pick because it ends on a choice your group will argue about: which document is true, the manuscript or the letter? Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling suspense writer, moves into the Vermont home of Jeremy Crawford to finish his injured wife Verity’s bestselling series, and finds Verity’s hidden autobiography.

Below are twenty questions: ten you can use before everyone has finished, and ten that spoil the ending. A short section covers the film adaptation. Our review scores the book four out of five, with a hook of five, tension of four and a half and characters of three. It runs about eighty thousand words and most people finish in a weekend.

Before You Start: Content Notes For Your Group

Tell your group first. The book has very explicit sex scenes, the deaths of children, harm to babies and children, grief, cancer and hospice, suicide references, infidelity and graphic violence late in the book. Our review recommends it for ages eighteen and up. If anyone in your club finds harm to children a hard line, do not choose this one.

Spoiler-Free Questions

1. Chapter one has Lowen watching a man die under a truck, and by chapter two she is offered a life-changing job. Why does the book move so fast, and did it hook you the way it hooked the reviewer?
2. Lowen is dry, nervous and funny, while Verity’s manuscript is confident, blunt and shameless. Which voice did you trust less?
3. The manuscript opens by promising it will taste so bad you will want to spit it out. Why did you keep reading it, and why does Lowen?
4. Lowen stays in a house she fears for weeks because of rent. Did you believe it?
5. The Crawford house has a blood-red door, ivy and an office with a wall of windows that work both ways. How does the setting build dread?
6. Small things keep unsettling Lowen: a moving curtain, a television that is off when it should be on, a child waving at an empty window. Which moment bothered you most?
7. Lowen is a sleepwalker who once walked onto a porch railing and jumped. How did that make you doubt her reading of the house?
8. Jeremy is grieving and almost too kind, and he and Lowen joke about the word alright. Did you root for them, given his wife is lying upstairs?
9. Crew, the five-year-old, steals every scene. What does he notice that the adults do not?
10. Our review calls the middle repetitive: Lowen reads, gets scared, swears she will stop and reads again. Did the loop work for you?

Spoiler Questions (Finish The Book First)

11. The manuscript, So Be It, paints Verity as a monster who harms her own children. After reading it, did you believe it?
12. Lowen sets up a baby monitor and sees Verity crawl out of bed and back in. How did that scene change what you thought was happening?
13. Jeremy attacks Verity after reading the manuscript, and Lowen tells him how to do it without leaving marks. Was Lowen an accomplice, a protector, or something worse?
14. The letter says the manuscript was an antagonistic journaling exercise that she combined into an autobiography, and that Jeremy tried to kill her. Which story fits the evidence better?
15. Lowen tears up the manuscript, flushes it and swallows what is left of the part with Jeremy’s name. Why does she choose silence?
16. Jeremy’s first question when handed the pages is where she found them, not what they are. What does that suggest about what he knew?
17. The manuscript’s last line has Verity driving her car into a tree, and the letter says Jeremy staged exactly that. Does that make the manuscript a confession or a blueprint?
18. Crew told Lowen his mother said not to talk about her, and he bit down on a knife. How should a reader weigh a child as the one person who knew the truth?
19. The title means truth, and the word Chronics is used for families hit by one tragedy after another. Is the book about a monster, or about bad luck and what people choose to believe?
20. Our review says Verity’s choices sometimes strain belief and no one faces consequences. Does the ambiguity earn that, or let the book off the hook?

The Film

As of October 2026, Verity has been adapted as a film directed by Michael Showalter, with Anne Hathaway as Verity, Dakota Johnson as Lowen and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy. The screenplay credit goes to Nick Antosca and Colleen Hoover. Two outlets report that Amazon MGM Studios opened it in United States theaters on October 2, 2026. Our review says it reportedly opened at number one, and that critics were harsher than audiences. The book reportedly took off on BookTok in 2021, years after it was published. Ask your group whether they would read the book or watch the film first.

What To Read Next

If your group enjoyed it, our books-like-it list covers similar thrillers, and the clues page reveals the hints planted before the twist. If you want the book spoiler-free first, start with the review, and use the ending explained page after the discussion.