Reviews with content warning for Terminal illness - Verity

I liked the tension - it kept me reading it in almost one go - but I think the plot had potential but was not fully thought through. Some loose ends make the story weaker and less believable

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rebeccaelizabeth94's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Holy mother forking shirtballs. This book was A LOT. I saw a lot of hype around Colleen Hoover and wasn’t sure what to make of it. Now that I read this book I get it. This book had me hooked and counting down the minutes until I could read it again each time I put it down. When I sat down to read every time I was transported to a Vermont home on a lake with a hospital bed and a sense of dread. The dual perspectives of Verity’s autobiography and Lowen’s perspective were amazing. Despite being absolutely repulsed with Verity’s autobiography I couldn’t get enough of the gory, horrid details. I got upset with Lowen when she didn’t read enough but skipped pages because I wanted to know what she was reading too. The extended edition with the bonus chapter was worth it!

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jennaslaney_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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groovyshay's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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hiraethtales's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I did not see the plot twist coming, But like I still think Verity did it, How the hell can she explain so many things??? AND YES SHE DIED I COULD NOT STAND HER. Also Crew was a sweetheart and deserves the world <3333

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criticalgayze's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

30 Before 30 - 3/30

A part of me wants to say that I now at least have an understanding of the CoHo craze, but this is her only thriller, and I truly cannot imagine reading a book by her that was just the romantic parts of this one.

I fully intended to give this book 1.5-stars because I am absolutely sick of the trope of painting PPD as some kind of villainous trait in women, but I think that, while the narrator is still disgustingly judgmental of the kind of psychological trauma pregnancy and childbirth can put a woman through, Hoover herself seems (maybe?) to have mostly redeemed her own complicity in the trope with the book's ending. (Although I am largely as confused as the narrator as to whether this is actually the case or not)

Speaking of the ending, talk about rushed. I felt like, throughout the book, the order of escalation was out of whack, there were largely spurts of tension in amongst the drudgery of straight white horniness as opposed to well built and sustained suspense, and that the culminating scene was over largely before I even realized it had begun.

tl;dr: Not good writing, but I tore through it in two days, so maybe there's something to be said for the Hoover phenomenon.

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