Amidst all the confusion of life and the pandemic I happened to read a crazy masterpiece. There are few psycho thrillers which you read that you already have an opinion about when you start off and you are so sure that this is how it is going to turn out and then when you read it, it not only stops you in your tracks but for some time you go comatose. Verity is a book just like that. It is simply brain shattering. I read it amidst cooking and all my chores and almost started a fire in my kitchen.

There are always two sides of a coin, in life we all have our preconceived notions of good bad evil. What is good from one person’s perception is completely different from another person’s view of life. Our definition of things in life are very different and the same thing can have different meaning for another person. This book questions all such perceptions takes you to the edge and pushes you off. The book questions the most basic thing and the beginning of every life, mother. We all have definitions of motherhood but this one is scary terrifying….. I’m scared to put in an epithet here.

The main antagonist and probably protagonist of the book is Verity, a successful best selling author who writes thrillers but with a twist. She writes books from the murderer’s point of view. Her books are evil and twisted and that makes her books, bestsellers

Verity meets with an accident which puts her in a vegetated state. She and her family have had a bad year, where within a span of a few months her twin daughters died in separate mysterious circumstances and then her own accident. Lowen Ashleigh is a lesser known author who writes thrillers like Verity. She is called on by the publishing house to complete the series that Verity was working on. She has troubles of her own, personal and financial. So its given to say that she needs the job badly. The story starts with her moving in to Verity’s home to help acquaint herself with the research, writings and drafts if any made by Verity for the series so that she can restart writing from where Verity had left off.

Once she moves in she finds a manuscript of an autobiography written by Verity just before her accident. The autobiography is dark and twisted and questions everything that has happened, everything that appears is probably not as it seems, there are two stories for everything that has happened or maybe not. The happy go lucky beautiful family consisting of Verity her husband her twin daughters and her little son may not really have been so happy and beautiful after all, or is fiction afterall just fiction.

For me the character of Verity is so prominent it wipes out all other characters. They seem to fade into oblivion. Her husband her son Lowen they all seem totally forgettable. I like the way the author has handled the character. It is dark, keeps you on the edge and wipes out any preconceived stereotypical ideas you may have.

For me I had to hug my daughter to sleep. Even as I say this it is a given that you have to read it.