Still in the group. Still taking recommendations. Still apparently incapable of learning my lesson.

Book two. Verity. Colleen Hoover.

Lowen is a writer. Not very well known. Not very rich. On her way to meet her agent in New York — the kind of meeting where nobody has good news — she witnesses a man get hit by a truck. The blood splashes on her. A stranger appears. Gives her his shirt. Walks her into a coffee shop. Very kind. Very helpful. Very conveniently present at the exact moment she needed someone.

That stranger then walks into the exact same meeting she is walking into. At the exact same publisher. And offers her the job of her life.

I need you to stop here with me for a second.

A man gets hit by a truck. Blood lands on a stranger. A second stranger appears with a shirt. That second stranger happens to be going to the same building, the same floor, the same meeting room, and has a job that pays enough to solve all of her financial problems.

In New York City. A city of eight million people.

This is page one. PAGE ONE. Red flag. Enormous red flag. The size of a building. Waving. In broad daylight. On page one.

Lowen said yes. Of course she did.

I want to be clear. I knew. I knew on page one. The truck. The shirt. The meeting. The job. The whole setup screamed at me with a megaphone.

I kept going anyway. The group promised a twist. That twist owed me something. Against every instinct I have developed over fifty years of being alive and occasionally suspicious of things that are too convenient — I kept going.

The shirt alone should have been enough. A stranger gives you his shirt in New York City. In New York City — where people will walk past you bleeding on the sidewalk and check their phone — a man removes his shirt and hands it to you. And then appears in your meeting. And then offers you a job. And then you move into his house. With his comatose wife.

I kept going. I needed that twist. I had earned that twist.

The House. The Office. The Manuscript Nobody Hid.

She arrives at the house. Remote. Lake. Vermont. The kind of house that in any other context would be on the cover of an architecture magazine. In this context it is where a woman who may or may not be conscious lives in the master bedroom while a stranger sorts through her office.

Verity Crawford. Bedridden. Unresponsive. Destroyed by a car accident. Her two daughters are dead. Her husband is grieving. Her son is five and doesn't fully understand any of it.

Lowen settles in. Goes through the office. Looks for notes.

Finds a manuscript instead.

An unpublished autobiography. Hidden. Not labeled. Not filed. Just sitting there — in the office of a woman who is allegedly unconscious upstairs — waiting to be found by the first stranger who moved in and started looking through things.

Now. I have a question.

WHO HIDES A CONFESSION IN THEIR OWN OFFICE.

Not in a bank vault. Not in a safety deposit box. Not shredded, burned, buried, or deleted. In the office. The room where someone is about to come and spend weeks going through every single piece of paper. That is where you hide the document that could destroy your life. In the filing cabinet. Essentially.

I need a moment.

Three Characters. One Doesn't Move. So Who Is The Villain.

Here is what we have.

Lowen — just arrived, knows nobody, found something she was never supposed to find and is now reading it in secret while sleeping under the same roof as the woman who wrote it. Brand new to this disaster. Cannot be the villain. Eliminated.

Verity — bedridden. Comatose. Doesn't speak. Doesn't move. Stares at the ceiling. Everything about her announces danger so loudly that making her the villain would not be a twist — it would be a receipt. You don't spend three hundred pages pointing at someone and then say surprise. Eliminated.

Which leaves Jeremy.

The man with the shirt. The man from the truck. The man who appeared on page one in circumstances so convenient they should have come with a warning label.

You solved him on page one.

You kept going anyway.

The Manuscript. And The Eighty Percent.

The manuscript is dark. Detailed. And immediately, aggressively, unapologetically about sex.

Not what I was expecting from a hidden confession found in a conscious woman's office. But here we are.

I came for the psychological thriller. I came for the dark secrets. I came for the woman in the bed who may or may not be conscious and the husband who may or may not be a killer.

I got Verity's sex life with Jeremy. In detail. From the beginning. Enthusiastically described by a woman who is allegedly unable to move or speak upstairs.

Eighty percent of this book is sex scenes. EIGHTY. PERCENT. I have seen less explicit content on websites that require you to confirm your age three times. The manuscript. The chapters. The everything. Sex. More sex. Jeremy. Lowen. The manuscript. Also sex.

I kept thinking surely — SURELY — we are done now and the thriller is coming back.

It was not coming. Only the characters were.

I have nothing against sex. Sex exists. Sex is fine.

But I came for a twist. And I had to survive eighty percent of a journey I did not sign up for to get there.

The twist owed me something.

And Then Verity Moved.

⚠️ Spoiler alert — if you haven't read Verity and plan to, skip to the verdict.

Just a leg. Just slightly. Caught on a security camera Lowen installed because something felt wrong. Something had always felt wrong. The truck. The shirt. The manuscript in the open office. All of it felt wrong and now there is proof.

Verity is not comatose.

Verity has been lying in that bed. Fully conscious. Listening to her husband fall in love with the stranger he brought into their house. Watching everything. Calculating everything. Not moving a single muscle for the entire book.

I put the book down.

That is either the most terrifying thing I have ever read or the most committed performance in literary history. Possibly both.

The twist surprised me. After everything — after the truck, the shirt, the eighty percent I survived — the twist genuinely surprised me. Not in the life-ruining way I was promised. But surprised. I will give Colleen that twenty percent. I will give her exactly that.

Lowen. Who Knew. And Said Nothing.

Lowen has proof. Lowen KNOWS.

And says nothing.

Not a word. Does not confront Verity. Does not say — hey. I know you can hear me. I know you have been lying in that bed watching me sleep with your husband and I think we should probably talk about this.

Nothing. Silence. Moving on.

Jeremy finds out. Loses his mind completely. Tries to strangle her.

Lowen stops him. Then suggests they make it look like an accident instead.

They force Verity to choke.

And Verity.

Verity — who faked paralysis for months. Who watched everything from that bed. Who calculated every move. Who survived all of it in complete silence.

Just lets it happen.

This woman lay in that bed conscious for months and did not move a single muscle. She heard every conversation. She saw everything. She had time and she had a plan and she had survived everything this house threw at her.

And when they came for her she said nothing. Did nothing. Lay there. And died.

The Agent. The Floorboard. And She Could Have Just Told Him.

Seven months later. Lowen is moving out. Pregnant with Jeremy's child. Everything is fine. Nobody has said anything. Nobody will ever say anything.

She finds a letter. Under the floorboards.

UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS, COLLEEN.

Not on the nightstand. Not in a drawer. Not emailed to literally anyone with an internet connection. Not handed to a lawyer, a nurse, a neighbor, a stranger on the street. Not slipped under a door. Not left somewhere — anywhere — that a human being with working eyes might find it before her death.

The floorboards.

Now. The letter. Verity's literary agent told her to write the manuscript as a writing exercise. Write yourself as the villain, she said. Write the darkest version of yourself. Write as though you killed your own children. Really inhabit it. Make it convincing.

WHAT AGENT TELLS YOU THIS.

What agent on this entire earth looks at their client — a mother — and says you know what would really sharpen your craft? A detailed first person confession to murdering your own daughters. Don't label it fiction. Don't put a warning on it. Don't lock it away. Just write it, leave it in your office where anyone could find it, and we'll say no more about it.

I have an agent. I would like to formally confirm that my agent has never suggested this. Not once. Not even remotely close.

So Verity wrote it. And then she hid the letter that proved she was innocent under the floorboards. And left the manuscript in her office. In the open. Available to anyone.

She hid the solution. She displayed the problem. In her own office.

And why didn't she just leave him. She was conscious. She could move. She had legs. She had a phone. She had an agent with a working memory and a professional obligation. She had a son in that house she supposedly loved. She had every reason to get up, walk out, call her agent, explain the manuscript, and leave Jeremy Crawford and his convenient shirt in Vermont where she found him.

She could have just told him. One sentence. One phone call. One agent to corroborate everything.

She chose the bed. She chose the silence. She chose the floorboards.

Lowen found the letter by accident. While moving out. After Verity was already dead.

And then Lowen burned it.

I need to lie down.

Two things are under those floorboards, Colleen. The letter. And my will to continue.

I lost two days of my life. I want them back. I want an apology from the floorboards.