Fair Warning
Today it’s Verity, by Colleen Hoover, and every clue that was hiding in plain sight before the twist.
Fair warning: this is full of spoilers, including the ending. If you haven’t finished the book, stop here and come back later.
The Twist In One Minute
Here’s the twist in short. Verity Crawford isn’t brain damaged. She has been faking it for months. Lowen finds that out, and a hidden letter then claims that Verity’s husband Jeremy tried to kill her after reading her autobiography, and that the manuscript was only fiction.
The good news is that Hoover plays fair. Almost all of it is planted early, sometimes in the very first chapter, so let’s go through the clues in order.
The Pause
Clue one is a tiny moment in the first chapter. In the coffee shop bathroom, Lowen tells Jeremy her name, and she notices a pause in him that only lasts a couple of seconds. At the time it looks like grief or politeness.
Later we learn Jeremy is the one who suggested Lowen to the publisher. He told her Verity had read her book, then admitted at night that he lied: Verity never read it. Jeremy picked her, so that pause may be him recognizing the name of a writer he had already read.
Verity’s Eyes
Clue two is Verity herself. On Lowen’s first full day, she is thinking it would have been better if Verity hadn’t survived the wreck. She looks up, and Verity’s head is turned, her eyes locked on hers through the office window. By the time Lowen reaches the door, the stare is gone, and the nurse is fixing a pillow. Lowen even says it herself: a woman like that can’t willingly turn her head.
Then there’s the curtain. Crew waves at Verity’s bedroom window and the curtain falls shut. A fan explains it away, but the nurse said she turned on the television, and when Lowen checks, the television isn’t on.
Crew Knows
Clue three is Crew, the child who says exactly what the adults can’t hear. After Crew cuts his chin, he says, mommy said I’m not supposed to touch her knife. There was a knife on the floor. When Lowen goes back, it’s gone.
A little later, when Lowen shows Jeremy family photos, Crew slams them back in the box and yells that he doesn’t want to see them. It reads as grief, and it may be. When he finally says that his mother told him not to talk about her, Lowen asks if she pretends she can’t talk, and he bites down on a knife. The only person who has known the truth the whole time is five years old.
Night Noises
Clue four lives in the dark. Lowen wakes up and hears footsteps lighter than Jeremy’s and heavier than Crew’s, then the stairs creaking one at a time, as if someone is creeping up them. On the night of her birthday, when Lowen is kissing Jeremy, she sees Verity at the top of the stairs, fists clenched. A moment later, Verity is in bed.
Later, Lowen and Jeremy wake up locked in the bedroom. The door is latched from the outside. Jeremy says a slammed door can latch by itself, which is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But the letter says Verity locked that door herself, so she could hear them trying to get out.
The Missing Manuscript
Clue five is what Verity does when nobody’s watching. When Lowen goes into the basement to find the old baby monitor, almost all the boxes have been moved and opened, as if someone was rummaging, and the monitor box has been shifted. Someone has been looking for something.
Then comes the monitor in Verity’s room, where Lowen sees her get on her hands and knees on the floor, looking like she’s digging. Seven months later, the floor is where Crew kept his drawings, and where Lowen finds the letter. It was the hiding place all along.
Holding Still
Clue six is how well Verity can hold still. Lowen tosses a wooden ball so it lands in front of her, and she doesn’t even flinch. Lowen wonders, unless she’s trained herself not to react. That is exactly what the letter describes: months of pretending, until it became survival.
The nurse, April, gives an early hint, too. She says she was hired about four weeks ago, talks to Verity as if she understands, and tells Lowen they don’t know how much Verity processes. Everyone around Verity is treating her as someone who might be listening, and they’re right.
Things That Don’t Match
Clue seven is a set of stories that don’t line up. In the manuscript, Verity cleans office buildings, steals a red dress, and sneaks into a party with an invitation from the trash. Jeremy, over pizza, says she was still in grad school and wore a long red dress. The letter says she made up the stolen dress for her writing exercise.
And the first chapter of the manuscript says she can sense Chastin’s death, as if she had foreseen it. Lowen even notes that it must have been written after Chastin died. The letter says she added that foreshadowing later, the night Harper died.
Then there’s Chastin’s scar. The manuscript blames Verity’s attempt with a wire hanger. But the doctor in that same chapter says it could simply be scarring from fibrous tissue, and Jeremy says Chastin was born with it. Nothing proves either story.
The Villain’s Voice
Clue eight is how Lowen reads Verity’s novels. Every book in the series is told from the villain’s point of view, and Lowen loves the audiobook because the narrator seems a little psychotic. Then, after the manuscript, she decides that Verity writes villains because she is one.
That’s the trap. The letter says the opposite: the manuscript is an exercise in thinking like a villain, the kind of exercise that made those books so convincing. Lowen takes a writer’s craft as a confession. It’s the clue that proves Hoover understands how readers judge writers.
The Car
Clue nine is the wreck. Early on, Corey says there were no skid marks, so either she fell asleep or did it on purpose. Jeremy says he was angry at Verity, and Lowen guesses he believes she hit the tree deliberately.
Then the manuscript’s last line says she’ll just drive her car into a tree, and earlier she mentions turning off the airbag. The letter says that is exactly what Jeremy did, because it would look like a perfect suicide. The clue was sitting in the last line of the manuscript.
Jeremy Too Good
Clue ten is Jeremy himself, and this one is my favorite. He’s gentle and patient, but he lies smoothly. He lies about Verity reading Lowen’s book. And when Lowen asks if Verity could be faking, he says he saw the scans, and that no one would, it would be impossible.
He also puts a lock on Lowen’s door, then another on Verity’s, and tells the nurse that Verity’s door comes open because of drafts. And when Lowen hands him the manuscript, he asks where she found it, not what it is. It’s easy to miss, and it tells you he’d seen it before.
Red Herrings
Not every strange thing is a clue. Lowen is a sleepwalker who once walked onto a porch railing and jumped, and she wakes up in Verity’s bed. She takes Xanax, drinks whiskey, and barely sleeps. Hoover keeps asking whether Lowen is the unreliable one.
The book also gives Jeremy an innocent explanation each time. He says Verity can’t walk, and that Lowen is exhausted. Those aren’t lies, exactly. They’re the way a loving husband, in denial, explains his wife away.
What It Adds Up To
On a reread, Verity is a different book. The first time, you think you’re reading a haunted house story. The second time, you see a woman hiding in plain sight, a son keeping her secret, and a husband who knows more than he says.
There’s even a small joke in the book’s language. Verity means truth, and the story is built so that nobody can lay hands on it. Lowen can’t, Jeremy can’t, and we can’t either.
My favorite part is that none of it settles who’s telling the truth. Every clue fits both versions of Verity, and that’s what makes this such a good book club argument.
Tell me in the comments which clue you caught first. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
