Colleen Hoover’s Verity: its crazy ending, explained

Colleen Hoover’s Verity

Verity was released as an indie project by Hoover in 2018. The book left readers with chills and questions. Let’s find out why!

The article contains spoilers.

Lowen and Jeremy’s meeting

Jeremy Crawford, with a publishing team, offers Lowen Ashleigh, an author, a contract to work on his wife and bestselling novelist Verity Crawford’s series. She’s met with an accident and rather than make the news public, they want to add a co-author for the remaining books.

Lowen is not a sociable writer, nor is as famous as Verity, so it doesn’t make sense to her. But, due to her current financial issues, she takes up the job after negotiating. Jeremy invites her to come sort through Verity’s notes, outlines and stuff at their home in Vermont, before coming back to New York to work on the books.

The couple’s home and Verity’s condition

Lowen finds their house to be gloomy, sinister. She meets with Jeremy’s son, Crew too. She already knows that the family has been through a number of tragedies- with the death of their twins (Chasity and Harper) to Verity’s crippling accident.

Verity cannot move or do anything. They have a nurse on duty which tends to her for the day. Apparently, she has brain damage from what she was told. Lowen is uneasy around Verity, for no specific reason.

Lowen begins working in her luxurious office, sorting through the mounts of papers, notes, files. Verity has written all the novels from the antagonist viewpoint, which makes her a famous and refreshing author.

Lowen is both impressed and intimidated by Verity. It’s then when she comes across Verity’s autobiography.

What the autobiography says and Lowen’s growing feelings for Jeremy

Verity’s autobiography is dark. She says she isn’t looking for people to like her after reading it, but to be careful as it turns darker. However, Lowen didn’t expect it to be that horrific.

First, she talks about Jeremy- how they met, extensive details about their sex life, how she became obsessed with him and her career. But her pregnancy makes things worse. She thinks the unborn baby stole Jeremy from her. She becomes jealous of her own baby.

She took pills, fell down, all intentionally, to miscarry. It’s revealed she’s carrying twins. Verity never feels maternal towards them, not even after they are born. She pretends tending for them before Jeremy, but that’s that.

Meanwhile, in present time, Lowen and Jeremy are getting to know each other better. They talk, share deep moments and through Verity’s account, she knows that Jeremy is a good man and father. Lowen fears Verity. Perhaps because of her autobiography.

One day, when things get intimate between the two in the living room, she sees Verity standing at the top of the staircase. She screams and although Jeremy doesn’t totally believe her, he starts locking Verity’s door from the outside.

The darkest secrets of Verity, exposed

Verity drops another bomb. That perhaps she killed her child. Chasity had died due to anaphylaxis, unexpected. In her notes, Verity suspects Harper to have killed her. She plots to kill her.

After 6 months, when the opportunity comes, she capsizes the canoe in which she, Crew and Harper were. She saves Crew but let’s Harper drown. Although she does act like a grieving mother when they pull her body out, which seems to have been caught in a fishing net underwater. Sometime later, Jeremy suspects of her to have killed Harper.

Lowen is shocked. She already thinks Verity is faking her injuries and even tells Jeremy about it. But he doesn’t listen and asks her to leave. Crying, she asks him to read that manuscript.

Jeremy reads the manuscript and the consequences

Jeremy is heartbroken. He charges into Verity’s room and threatens to call police unless she moves. She does, and Jeremy chokes her, even after her pleas to explain. With Lowen’s idea (stolen from Verity’s autobiography), Jeremy kills Verity by making her choke on her own vomit.

Both of them are rattled and Jeremy keeps repeating that Verity died in her sleep, and getting their stories right, spending the night together.

The ending and the big question

Seven months later, they all have moved elsewhere. Lowen is pregnant. She goes to Verity’s room and finds a letter for Jeremy hidden in the floor. It is supposed to explain things to Jeremy. He has read the manuscript before. At that time, he tried to kill Verity. He rammed her car in a tree and made it look like an accident. But Verity survived, and started acting brain-dead to survive.

She explains that her autobiography was not her true self. It was antagonistic journaling to improve her books after her editor recommended. It also helped lessened her pain of tragedies. But it was inexplicable. She’d planned to escape with Crew and hoped to asked forgiveness later.

Lowen is flabbergasted. She destroys the letter and vows to hide the truth from Jeremy. She isn’t even sure of the truth. And that’s the big question- was Verity innocent or was she a pathological, manipulative liar using this letter to cover her tracks?

The end is definitely shocking. Who could write such sinister things for her own kids without having done so? She might be lying in the letter. We don’t know her except from second person accounts. All depends on how you connect with the character and what you choose to believe.