The Short Version
Here is the Verity book summary with no spoilers: Lowen Ashleigh, a broke suspense writer, is hired to finish the bestselling series of Verity Crawford, an author left unable to move or speak after a car crash, and she moves into the Crawford house in Vermont to sort through Verity’s notes. There she finds Verity’s secret autobiography, and the more she reads, the less safe the house feels.
After a spoiler-free overview and a clear warning, I go through Colleen Hoover’s 2018 thriller in order: the manuscript, the letter and the ending.
Jump to: No spoilers · Full plot · Characters · Timeline · Manuscript · Letter · Chastin and Harper · Ending · Themes
What Is Verity About? (Spoiler-Free)
Lowen Ashleigh writes suspense novels that hardly anyone reads. Her mother has just died, she is about to be evicted, and on her way to a meeting at Pantem Press, a man steps in front of a truck and his blood sprays all over her. A stranger helps her clean up. He turns out to be Jeremy Crawford, husband of the bestselling author Verity Crawford, who was badly hurt in a car crash after the couple lost both of their twin daughters.
The publisher wants someone to finish Verity’s series, and Jeremy wants it to be Lowen. To do the job, she has to go through Verity’s office in the family’s isolated house in Vermont, where Jeremy lives with their five year old son, Crew, while Verity lies upstairs, unable to speak. Hidden in that office is an unfinished autobiography Lowen was never meant to read.
It’s an adult thriller with explicit sex and harm to children.
Spoiler Warning
Everything below this line gives away the whole book: what the manuscript says, who dies and how, the letter, and the last line. If you haven’t finished Verity, stop here and read our spoiler-free Verity review instead.
What Happens in Verity?
Lowen finds So Be It, Verity’s secret autobiography. In it, Verity describes resenting her twin daughters, Chastin and Harper, trying to end the pregnancy, choking baby Harper, and tipping a canoe on purpose so that Harper drowned.
Lowen keeps seeing signs that Verity is not as helpless as she looks, and she and Jeremy begin an affair. A baby monitor finally catches Verity crawling on the floor. Lowen gives Jeremy the manuscript, Verity opens her eyes and speaks, and Jeremy kills her with Lowen’s help, making it look as if she choked in her sleep. Seven months later, a pregnant Lowen finds a hidden letter in which Verity says the manuscript was a writing exercise, Harper’s death was an accident, and Jeremy staged her crash. Lowen destroys the letter and never tells him.
Verity Characters at a Glance
| Character | Who they are | Key moment (spoilers) |
|---|---|---|
| Lowen Ashleigh | The narrator, a struggling suspense writer and sleepwalker, working under the pen name “Laura Chase” | Helps Jeremy kill Verity (ch. 23), then destroys Verity’s letter (ch. 25) |
| Jeremy Crawford | Verity’s husband, a former real estate man caring for his wife and son | Kills Verity (ch. 23); the letter accuses him of staging her crash |
| Verity Crawford | Bestselling thriller author who writes from the villain’s point of view | Revealed to be faking her injuries (ch. 22 and 23) and dies the same night |
| Crew | The Crawfords’ five year old son | Repeats what “Mommy said” (ch. 9 and 21) |
| Chastin | Twin with a scar on her cheek and a peanut allergy | Dies at eight after a sleepover (manuscript) |
| Harper | Chastin’s twin, diagnosed with Asperger’s at three (ch. 10) | Drowns in the lake behind the house at eight (manuscript) |
| Corey | Lowen’s literary agent and ex | Points out there were no skid marks at Verity’s crash (ch. 3) |
| April | Verity’s weekday nurse, hired about four weeks before (ch. 11) | Suspicious of Lowen |
| Amanda Thomas | Verity’s editor at Pantem Press (ch. 2) | In the letter, she suggests “antagonistic journaling” |
Verity Timeline
Lowen narrates 25 numbered chapters. Between them sit ten sections of Verity’s manuscript, So Be It (MS, numbered in reading order), and a letter comes just before the last chapter.
| Stage | Chapter | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | 1 | Lowen sees a man killed by a truck, and Jeremy helps her in a coffee shop bathroom |
| Setup | 2 | Pantem offers her Verity’s series |
| Setup | 4 | Lowen reaches Vermont, meets Crew, April and Verity, and finds So Be It |
| Manuscript | MS 1 | Verity meets Jeremy at a party, in a red dress she says she stole |
| The house | 6 | Verity seems to stare at Lowen through the office window |
| Manuscript | MS 3 | Twins on the way; Verity tries to end the pregnancy with a wire hanger |
| The house | 13 | Lowen sleepwalks into Verity’s bed |
| Manuscript | MS 6 | Verity pushes her fingers down baby Harper’s throat |
| The house | 16 | Jeremy kisses Lowen; she sees Verity standing at the top of the stairs |
| Manuscript | MS 8 | Chastin dies of an allergic reaction at a sleepover |
| The house | 18 and 19 | Lowen and Jeremy sleep together and wake up locked in from outside |
| Manuscript | MS 9 | Verity tips the canoe, and Harper drowns |
| Manuscript | MS 10 | Jeremy’s question, and the line about driving into a tree |
| Crisis | 22 | The monitor shows Verity crawling; Lowen gives Jeremy the manuscript |
| Crisis | 23 | Verity speaks, and Jeremy and Lowen kill her |
| After | 24 | Seven months later, Lowen finds a hole in Verity’s floor |
| After | Letter | Verity’s letter, “Dear Jeremy” |
| After | 25 | Lowen destroys the letter and keeps the secret |
How Does Verity Begin?
In Chapter 1, Lowen is walking to a meeting in Manhattan when a man looking at his phone steps in front of a truck. She calls it “Death by routine.” A stranger leads her into a coffee shop bathroom, helps her wash off the blood and gives her his own shirt. He tells her he pulled his eight year old daughter’s body out of a lake five months ago.
In Chapter 2, the stranger turns up at the same meeting. He’s Jeremy Crawford. The editor, Amanda Thomas, explains that Verity Crawford can’t finish the last three books of her series after a car accident. Lowen turns the job down, but alone with her, Jeremy says Verity loved Lowen’s novel Open Ended. He explains that Verity called their family Chronics, “Prone to chronic tragedy,” because they lost both twins, Chastin first and Harper six months later. He tells her to ask for half a million dollars, no publicity and a pen name.
In Chapter 3, Corey, Lowen’s agent and ex, notes that Verity’s crash left no skid marks. In Chapter 4, Lowen drives to Vermont. She meets Crew, the nurse April and Verity, who lies upstairs in a hospital bed with vacant eyes. Jeremy picks her pen name, Laura Chase. In the sixth box in Verity’s office, she finds a manuscript called So Be It, and she starts to read.
What Is in Verity’s Manuscript?
So Be It opens with an author’s note that promises the reader “an uncomfortable distaste for its author.” Here is what the ten sections say, in order.
- Verity meets Jeremy at a charity party. She says she stole her red dress and her invitation, and that she cleaned office buildings for a living. They escape from a limousine that wasn’t his. The section ends, “Until he discovered the one thing that meant more to him than I did.”
- Verity writes her first novel; Jeremy reads it, proposes, and they conceive that night. She closes with “Darkness ahead.”
- They’re having twin girls. Jealous that Jeremy will love them more, Verity tries sleeping pills, wine and, in her fifth month, a wire hanger.
- The twins are born by cesarean. One has a scar on her cheek, which Verity blames on herself and the doctor says could be fibrous tissue. She names them Chastin and Harper.
- Verity unplugs the monitors and leaves the babies crying while Jeremy is at work.
- At six months, Verity dreams that Harper smothers Chastin. She loves Chastin now, and she pushes two fingers down Harper’s throat until Jeremy walks in.
- In the new house in Vermont, Jeremy throws his dinner at the wall and accuses Verity of only caring about Chastin. To calm him down, she lies that she’s pregnant.
- Crew is conceived for real. Years later, Chastin dies of anaphylaxis at eight, after a sleepover where the girls ate snacks in the night. Verity is sure Harper killed her.
- Six months to the day later, Verity takes Harper and Crew out in the canoe. She covers Crew’s mouth and whispers, “Crew. Sweetie. Hold your breath.” Then she tips the boat. Harper drowns, caught in a fishing net.
- Days later, Jeremy asks, “Why did you tell Crew to hold his breath, Verity?” She ends the manuscript with “so be it” and “I’ll just drive my car into a tree.”
What Strange Things Happen in the Crawford House?
In Chapter 5, Jeremy remembers Verity as a grad student in a long red dress, which doesn’t match the manuscript. In Chapter 6, Verity seems to stare at Lowen through the office window, a curtain moves, and a television April said she turned on is off. When Lowen loses her new apartment, Jeremy asks her to stay until her advance comes through.
In Chapter 7, Jeremy says Chastin was born with her scar. He installs a lock on Lowen’s door, and we learn why she wanted one: as a child, she sleepwalked so badly that her mother became afraid of her. In Chapter 9, Crew cuts his chin and says, “Mommy said I’m not supposed to touch her knife.” The knife on the floor disappears, and Verity’s head has turned. In Chapter 10, Jeremy admits he was angry at Verity after her crash.
In Chapter 13, Lowen wakes up in Verity’s bed. She tells Jeremy how, at ten, she stood on a porch railing in her sleep for an hour, then jumped. In Chapter 15, he confesses that Verity never read Lowen’s book. He did, and he tells her, “Your writing matters to me, Lowen.”
On her birthday in Chapter 16, they kiss on the couch, and Lowen sees Verity standing at the top of the stairs, fists clenched. Verity is in bed when Jeremy runs up. He says, “She can’t walk, Lowen.” In Chapter 18, Lowen throws a wooden ball in front of Verity, who doesn’t flinch. That night Lowen and Jeremy sleep together. In Chapter 19, they wake up locked in the bedroom from outside, and Jeremy breaks the window to get out.
What Happens When Jeremy Reads the Manuscript?
In Chapter 20, Lowen reads the canoe section, throws up, and still decides to keep quiet, because Jeremy has arranged weekday care for Verity in a facility. In Chapter 21, Lowen asks Crew why the boat tipped over. He answers, “Mommy said I shouldn’t talk to you if you ask me questions about her,” and bites down on a butter knife so hard he needs stitches. Left alone with Verity, Lowen finds the basement boxes rummaged through, sets up an old baby monitor in Verity’s room, and reads the last section.
In Chapter 22, the monitor shows Verity on her hands and knees on the floor. She climbs back into bed. Lowen runs up with a knife and drags her half out of bed, and Jeremy pulls Lowen away and orders her to leave. She pushes the manuscript into his hands. His first words are “Where did you find this?”
In Chapter 23, Jeremy reads, then threatens to take the pages to the police unless Verity opens her eyes. She does, and says, “I had to, Jeremy.” He chokes her. Lowen stops him by reminding him of Crew, then tells him how to do it without leaving marks: make her vomit and cover her mouth and nose, so that “It’ll look like she aspirated in her sleep.” Verity dies, and they agree to say she died in her sleep.
Was Verity Faking?
Yes. Verity was faking her brain injury while Lowen was in the house. The monitor catches her crawling in Chapter 22, she speaks in Chapter 23, and her letter admits it. What the book never settles is why. For every clue that pointed to it along the way, see our Verity clues you missed.
What Does the Letter Say?
Chapter 24 jumps seven months ahead. Lowen is pregnant, and she, Jeremy and Crew live in Southport, North Carolina. Back at the old house to clear it out, Crew runs upstairs, saying, “I forgot she used to keep them in the floor.” Under a loose board in Verity’s room, Lowen finds a photo of the girls, the missing knife and a letter addressed to Jeremy.
In the letter, Verity says her editor, Amanda, once suggested “antagonistic journaling”: write real moments from your life, but make your inner thoughts sinister. Verity did it for years to learn to write villains, then joined the entries into an autobiography meant to teach other writers. She says Harper’s drowning was an accident. She told Crew to hold his breath as the canoe was tipping, not before. A few nights after Harper died, she wrote the chapters about both girls’ deaths in one night of grief, and went back and added foreshadowing.
The next night, she says, Jeremy found the file on her laptop. He choked her until she passed out, and she woke in the passenger seat of her Range Rover with tape on her mouth, her hands and feet bound and no seat belt. She assumes he then put her behind the wheel and crashed it into a tree. After a coma, she faked her injuries because she was afraid he would try again. Only Crew knew. She was searching for the printed manuscript and waiting for the money from the new books so she could leave with Crew, and she locked Lowen and Jeremy in the bedroom while she hid the letter. She signs off, “I love you. Even still.”
How Did Chastin and Harper Die?
Chastin died of anaphylaxis at eight. During a sleepover at her friend Maria’s house, the girls took snacks from the pantry in the night, and Harper said they didn’t know the snacks had peanuts in them. In the manuscript, Verity believes Harper killed her sister on purpose, but even she has no proof, and she doesn’t claim to have done it herself.
Harper drowned at eight, six months later to the day, when the canoe tipped over on the lake behind the house and she got caught in a fishing net. Both deaths were ruled accidents (ch. 3). The manuscript says Verity tipped the canoe on purpose. The letter says it was an accident. Nothing in the book proves which is true.
How Does Verity End?
In Chapter 25, Lowen realizes that if the letter is true, she and Jeremy killed an innocent woman. She tears it into shreds, flushes them, and eats every piece she can find with Jeremy’s name on it. She tells him she’s alright. As they drive away, he touches her stomach and says, “Ten more weeks.”
Lowen decides Jeremy will never know. She tells herself the letter could be another manipulation, and that even if Jeremy caused the crash, they both believed Verity was a threat to Crew. The book’s last line is her question: “Which truth was she manipulating?” For both readings of that line, see our Verity ending explained.
Themes in Verity
1. Truth, and who gets to tell it. Lowen’s whole view of Verity comes from one document. After the wire hanger chapter (ch. 7), she decides “A mother wouldn’t write that about herself” unless it were true. The letter then asks her to believe the opposite, and the last line (ch. 25) leaves both stories standing.
2. Writers and their villains. Verity’s novels are all told from the villain’s point of view (ch. 4), and in Chapter 9 Lowen decides Verity writes villains because she is one. The letter’s defense is the reverse: the manuscript was an exercise in writing like a villain. Lowen knows the trap: in Chapter 2, she says Corey fell for the heroine of her first novel before he met her.
3. Grief and the Chronics. Jeremy’s word for his family (ch. 2) comes back when Lowen calls the place “a house full of Chronics” (ch. 19), and again in the letter. The manuscript’s cruelest idea, that once you lose one child you might as well have lost them all (MS 9), is answered in Chapter 24: “Losing one child, or even two, doesn’t mean you’ve lost them all.”
4. Mothers, and fear of yourself. After the railing night, Lowen’s mother slept behind three locks (ch. 13), and Lowen still doesn’t trust herself asleep. The manuscript makes a mother the danger in the house, and by the end Lowen is about to become one, with a killing on her conscience.
5. Desire and complicity. In Chapter 20, Lowen admits she has fallen for Jeremy “because of Verity’s words.” She sleeps with him in Verity’s bed (ch. 18), then helps him kill Verity (ch. 23). I think the letter terrifies her because it makes her Jeremy’s accomplice, not his rescuer.
Where To Go Next
For which document to believe, read our Verity ending explained. Our Verity clues you missed traces every hint before the twist, and the Verity book club questions are ready for your group. Still deciding? Start with the spoiler-free Verity review, or find your next read in books like Verity.
