All About Verity (Day 158, Year 2)

I am only able to write now, at the very end of the day, (I mean, really, it is well past the end of any reasonable day) because I  was finishing Verity by Colleen Hoover. 

I am a bit late to the game on this book. I avoided it (completely and irrationally) because it was popular. And I don't like popular things that I did not discover first. I am NOT a poser. And yes, I know it is not 1994; but you simply cannot take the high school out of me (I intend upon being ridiculous FOREVER). 

Anyway, Verity. 

First of all, I devoured this book in about 24 hours, reading during stolen moments like some sort of addict. I even woke up early to read. I made strange bargains with myself: work for 1 hour straight without distraction and earn 10 minutes of Verity! I read bits while watching dance recital rehearsal (becoming paranoid that my children or someone else's children were reading the salacious bits over my shoulder.) I told my husband to stop speaking, when he was describing his very first day at a brand-new, fancy, grown-up job (first new job in 14 years. I think it went great. I'll ask him tomorrow because VERITY!), to finish the last few chapters. 

I consumed that novel like a bag of potato chips--quickly, without apology and with crumbs carelessly dripping down my face into my cleavage. 

Friends, Verity is wonderful. 

It is also one of the most messed up things I have ever read in my life; but somehow Hoover does a good job of keeping the mess as neat as a mess can be--sort of like if you had a giant hoard of newspapers; but you organized them in clear bins with labels created using decorative fonts like you actually cared about the newspapers you were hoarding. 

The book should probably come with some trigger alerts.  However, the opening scene involves someone getting their head crushed by a truck in Manhattan and a bystander being splattered by the blood of the someone with a crushed head. Once you read that in the first few pages, you just know that you will be triggered over and over and over and over again.

And then again. 

The book also contains endless sex. I texted a friend to tell her that the mix of tragedy and pornography was right up her alley (Hi, Kate!!). Another friend asked me how Verity was and I said, simply and truthfully:

It was the most fucked up book I've ever read and it was wonderful.

GO read it!!! It's no longer that popular and totally vintage, so you won't be a poser, but more of a discoverer of a marvelous, insane, deeply believable, very human, very tragic, very pornographic (don't let children read over your shoulder! or grandmothers!) novel that is really one of the best, ever.