Afternoon Everyone,

I hope you’re all enjoying your Sunday. We’re still experiencing some very warm weather in the UK and I have to say that even as a sun lover, I’m starting to miss feeling cool. Thankfully the temperatures are due to drop a little bit this week and I can enjoy not being sweaty and try and bring my garden back to life.

Book 📖

I’m back with a review following another buddy read with my bestest pal. Verity was my choice as after we had read It Ends With Us, I am becoming a bit of a CoHo fan girl.

Description 🔖

Lowen is a struggling author and is on the brink of being evicted from her home so when the opportunity of a lifetime lands on her doorstep, she’s not in a position to turn it down. Jeremy Crawford; husband of best selling author Verity Crawford is looking for an author to finish the final two books in his wife’s series. Verity is unable to complete the series because of an illness, so Lowen has the challenge to pick up where Verity left off.

In order to get to know Verity’s intentions for the series and find out if she had any outline, Lowen goes to stay with the Crawfords so that she can sift through Verity’s office. She goes looking for notes but ends up finding a secret manuscript that Verity had no intention of sharing with anyone. What she reads in this could bring the Crawford’s world crashing down around them.

As Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy start to grow, she realises that sharing the manuscript with him would be devastating, but could help her chances of a relationship with him. After all, however devoted and in love with Verity he may be, the truth as written in the manuscript would kill any love he has for her.

General Thoughts 🤔

Colleen Hoover did it again. She blew my socks off with another story that I got completely lost in. This was such a great choice for a buddy read as the plot really did lend itself well to discussion, guessing and theorising. We had planned a reading guide that went out of the window by day 2 and we ended up binging it all well ahead of schedule because it was near impossible to put down.

Characters 👫👭👬

I need to be careful writing this section so I don’t give any spoilers away so I’ll try and give my thoughts but at the same time, keep it brief.

Lowen: I liked her but I wish she had more confidence in herself and had a bit more of a backbone. I did feel bad for her as although she was being rewarded generously for the job, she could never have anticipated all that would come with it.

Jeremy: I often feel quite strongly towards a male character in books like this but oddly, I didn’t love or hate Jeremy. I had moments of strong suspicion when I questioned his intentions, but mostly, I found him to be a man who had suffered great tragedy and spending each day trying to keep it together.

Verity: she was the woman I loved to hate. She wasn’t a nice character to read, but she was the character I wanted to read. A lot of my sad feelings for Lowen stemmed from Verity and what she had dragged Lowen into; whether intentional or not.

Writing Style ✍️

This being my second CoHo book I’ve read, it is now clear to me why she is such a successful author with such a huge following. She has the ability to create characters that you can’t get enough of that are involved in a story that has mystery and invokes shock.

I get the impression that this author doesn’t censor herself when she’s writing. If her mind goes to dark places, that spills out onto the page. The book was split between Lowen’s perspective and chapters from Verity’s manuscript and I definitely found the manuscript to be the darker sections. For a reader who loves that style of uncensored writing, I was naturally drawn towards the manuscript sections.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

Sign me up to the CoHo fan club. I’ve bought into the hype. Verity was a good litmus test for me to check that I didn’t just love It Ends With Us, I loved the author. I love that she doesn’t hold back in her writing and she seems unafraid of shocking her readers. I can’t wait to read more.

😍😍😍😍😍