- It Ends With Us is the successful first movie adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel.
- Colleen Hoover’s thriller novel Verity should be the next book-to-movie adaptation.
- Verity ‘s chilling storyline offers a fresh look at Hoover’s writing style and would translate well from page to screen.
Colleen Hoover is a pretty major name in the book community, specifically the romance genre, and the first movie adaptation of one of her novels has recently hit theaters and is quickly taking the world by storm. It Ends With Us follows a woman named Lily (Blake Lively) who moves to Boston with the dream of opening her own business. There she meets a handsome neurosurgeon named Ryle (Justin Baldoni), whom she quickly falls in love with. But when her first love, Atlas (Brandon Skenlar), comes back into the picture, Lily is forced to choose between the two. The film and Hoover have been hot topics as of late, and not just because of how successful the movie and its source material are, but because the main relationship of the story is an abusive one that tends to be romanticized throughout. This is a theme throughout many of Colleen Hoover’s works, but any real warning of it has been noticeably absent from It Ends With Us marketing, and the movie has been marketed as more of a straight forward romantic love triangle movie, when it’s anything but.
Still, audiences have been flocking to the theaters to see it, or their nearest bookstore to pick up the novel and its sequel to see how the story plays out on paper. So really, it’s no surprise that, despite the controversial nature of the story, more of Hoover’s work has been greenlit for film adaptations. Her 2019 novel Regretting You recently scored some major casting announcements in Allison Williams and Dave Franco, which is set to be the next Hoover story to hit the big screen. But another book of Hoover’s is screaming to be brought from page to screen, and that is the 2018 thriller Verity.
What Is Colleen Hoover’s ‘Verity’ About?
Verity follows a young and struggling writer named Lowen who is given the opportunity of a lifetime when she’s approached by Jeremy Crawford, husband of best-selling author Verity Crawford. Verity is best known for writing novels from the perspective of the villain, and has made a huge name for herself through her work. However, she has recently been left incapacitated due to a car accident, leaving an unfinished book series behind. Jeremy offers Lowen a large sum of money to complete the series on Verity’s behalf, and though she’s initially hesitant to accept the offer, she ultimately agrees. She temporarily moves into the Crawford home, where she works from Verity’s home office, and generally tries to get inside the woman’s head as she sets out to finish her final novels. Something that shouldn’t be too hard considering Verity is still living in the house in a comatose state.
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While she works on the novel, Lowen discovers an unpublished autobiography of Verity’s life that reveals dark secrets about the woman Lowen once looked up to. The book begins to incorporate chapters of the autobiography into the actual story, allowing us to read along with Lowen as she learns of new bombshells. As it turns out, Verity may not be the loving mother and wife she made herself out to be; she may be someone much darker, harboring sinister secrets under the surface, including the truth about the deaths of her twin daughters. It’s up to Lowen to uncover those secrets, and expose Verity’s true intentions to those closest to her, all the while protecting herself.
‘Verity’ Is a Stark Departure From ‘It Ends With Us’
It was announced in May 2024 that Verity would be getting a movie adaptation from Amazon MGM, but there has yet to be any movement since then, leaving fans to believe it’ll be a little while before we see the Verity adaptation. But of all of Colleen Hoover’s works, Verity is the one that suits the big screen the most. Yes, we all love a romance movie, but the simplicity of Verity’s story, in how it’s pretty much all one setting and a relatively small cast of characters, makes it an ideal candidate for a movie adaptation. There’s no need for casting younger actors for flashback scenes like in It Ends With Us, as all the flashbacks really only go back a few years, and wouldn’t change the character’s appearances drastically enough for it to make a difference. Plus, the majority of the story takes place inside the Crawford house, giving the story a claustrophobic, eerie feeling that will benefit so well from an on-screen portrayal. Audiences love the suspense, and the book did that quite well. A movie will only double down on that. Not to mention, Verity is chock-full of twists, ones you may or may not see coming, but will nonetheless have audiences talking.