YMMV / Verity

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Verity's (at least how she portrays herself in the manuscript) treatment of her twin daughters is mostly just to show how monstrous she is, but it's also possible to view her as suffering from particularly extreme postpartum mental issues. Even before that, the sheer extent of her obsessive tendencies and lust for Jeremy do make her come across as a little unstable.
• Broken Base: Was Verity's manuscript the truth and a murder confession? While the letter was a final attempt to make herself look innocent and sympathetic? Or was the letter the truth, and her daughters' deaths were truly accidental?
• Designated Hero:
  • Lowen is meant to be the relatable, sympathetic heroine of the book, but her actions certainly don't make her come across as either. For one, she's hired to ghostwrite a successful author's book series, but all she really does in the weeks she spends in Crawford manor is snooping around the house, stalking her employer, making the moves on said employer's husband and not writing a single word even though that's what she was hired for. That's not to mention her at times heinous thoughts about the disabled Verity and her being extremely rude to Crew, Verity's and Jeremy's son. The fact that she endorses and encourages Jeremy's murder of Verity at the end and shows no remorse for it, even after The Reveal that Verity actually wasn't the selfish monster Lowen thought she was, only puts the cherry on top.
  • Jeremy is meant to be a sympathetic Broken Bird of a man, whom the reader is supposed to sympathize with even as he murders his wife in cold blood, due to him losing his twin daughters in short succession and having had to live with a braindead wife who faked her condition for months. However, the way Jeremy is written makes him come across less as the troubled martyr Lowen makes him out to be and more like a controlling, abusive monster willing to murder a woman he claims to love at the drop of a hat. It doesn't help that while Jeremy had believed Verity had killed their daughters, only for the ending to suggest she was innocent.
• Narm: The bite marks in the headboard that are mentioned to have been left by Verity in the throes of sex can come off as pretty silly, there being easier ways to keep quiet besides roleplaying as a beaver and feeling tonally-off for what's supposed to be a serious thriller.

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