As a fellow author whose book is currently being adapted for film, I’ve been thinking about Colleen Hoover a lot lately. Not about her books — about what happened to her.
When It Ends With Us hit theaters in 2024, it should have been a pure celebration. Your debut book-to-film adaptation — based on a very personal story — is one of the most exciting moments in an author’s career — I know because my own novel, Perfect Modern Wife, is being adapted right now by my dream writer/director Joanna Tsanis, and I can tell you firsthand: it’s a long, rigorous, emotional process. You pour years into writing a book, then hand it to someone else to reimagine, and you hold your breath. And when it finally premieres, you want to enjoy that moment. Consider what Colleen Hoover went through just to get there: she published It Ends With Us in August 2016. Three years later, in 2019, Justin Baldoni optioned the film rights. Then came the screenplay — a first draft wasn’t finished until late 2021. Casting didn’t start until January 2023. Filming began that May, got shut down by the SAG-AFTRA strike, and didn’t resume until early 2024. The movie finally premiered on August 9, 2024 — eight years after the book came out. Eight years of development, rewrites, casting calls, production pauses, and the kind of excruciating patience that only authors whose work is being adapted understand. That’s eight years of holding your breath. And then, instead of getting to exhale, Hoover’s premiere was swallowed by off-screen drama that had nothing to do with the story she wrote. As a fellow author, it was painful to watch.
So when I say I hope the Verity movie — hitting theaters October 2, 2026, starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett — is a huge success for Colleen Hoover, I mean it personally. She deserves a book-to-film moment that’s actually about the book.
And Verity deserves it. This is the book that proved Colleen Hoover could write darkness — real, unsettling, morally compromised darkness. A thriller disguised as a love story disguised as a confession disguised as a lie. And if you’re looking for books like Verity, you already know the feeling: that specific brand of psychological vertigo where you trusted a narrator, fell for their version of events, maybe even rooted for a relationship you shouldn’t have — and then the floor dropped out. You’re not just looking for another thriller. You’re looking for another book that makes you question your own judgment.
Good news: I found ten of them. (And if you’re already building your summer TBR, check out our picks for the best summer thriller books of 2026 and our psychological thriller beach reads that’ll destroy your trust in everyone by the pool.) Read these before the adaptation drops, and you’ll be the person at the watch party who already knows what everyone should read next.
Why Books Like Verity Hit Different Right Now
Here’s what Verity understood before almost anyone else: readers don’t want to feel safe anymore. They want to be destabilized.
The traditional thriller gives you a crime, a detective, and a resolution. Verity gives you a manuscript that might be a confession or might be a performance — and it never tells you which. The entire book runs on the question of whether you can trust the words on the page. And that question — can I trust what I’m reading, watching, hearing? — is the defining anxiety of 2026. We live in an era of deepfakes, unreliable narration at every level of public life, and the growing suspicion that nobody is telling the whole truth about anything. Thrillers have always been mirrors for society. Right now, the mirror is showing us that truth itself has become the unreliable narrator.
That’s why the “dark romance thriller” — the subgenre Verity essentially invented for mainstream audiences — has exploded. Psychological thrillers now account for 28% of all fiction sales in North America and the UK. BookTok has turned “morally gray” from a character flaw into a selling point. And readers — especially women — are done pretending they only want clean, safe love stories. They want the darkness. They want the manipulation. They want to feel something dangerous from the safety of their couch.
Every book on this list delivers that. Some lean harder into romance. Some lean harder into psychological horror. All of them will make you question what you think you know about the characters — and about yourself for rooting for them.
10 Books Like Verity for Readers Who Love Unreliable Narrators and Dark Romance
1. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (2019)
Alicia Berenson is a famous painter. She shoots her husband five times in the face. Then she never speaks again. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, becomes obsessed with uncovering why — and his methods of getting answers are not exactly ethical.
If Verity hooked you with the “what is this person hiding” tension, The Silent Patient takes that concept ant strips it down to its most primal form: a woman who literally refuses to give you her version of events. You’re left reading her art, her diary, her silence — constructing a narrative that may or may not be real. Sound familiar? The twist hits with the same force as Verity’s final pages, and you’ll be rethinking every scene the moment you close the book.
Want more books like this one? See our full list of books like The Silent Patient.
Why this is a perfect books like Verity pick: Same unreliable narrator architecture, same “the truth was right in front of you” revelation, same inability to trust any character’s stated motivations.
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
If you haven’t read this yet, I genuinely envy you. Amy Dunne disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary. Her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect. And then, halfway through the book, Gillian Flynn detonates everything you thought you knew about this marriage.
Gone Girl is the blueprint that made books like Verity possible. Flynn proved that readers would not only tolerate a deeply unlikable, manipulative female character — they’d be obsessed with her. Amy Dunne is a masterclass in unreliable narration, and the marriage at the center of this book is the most toxic, fascinating, can’t-look-away relationship in modern fiction. Verity’s manuscript feels like a spiritual descendant of Amy’s diary entries: confessions designed to seduce and manipulate, where the line between truth and performance is the whole point.
Why this is essential: If Verity was your gateway into dark psychological thrillers, Gone Girl is the foundation text. You need this in your bloodstream. I wrote a full deep-dive on books like Gone Girl — 8 ruthless psychological thrillers that share its DNA.
3. The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine (2017)
Amber Patterson has a plan: befriend wealthy, beautiful Daphne Parrish, seduce her husband Jackson, and steal her entire life. It’s calculated, cold-blooded social climbing — and for the first half of this book, you’re watching a sociopath work. Then the perspective shifts to Daphne, and everything changes. The woman you dismissed as a naive trophy wife has been playing a game so much darker and more desperate than Amber’s that it reframes every scene you’ve already read.
This is the books like Verity pick for readers who loved the power reversal. In Verity, you think you know who the victim is and who the villain is — until the manuscript flips the script. The Last Mrs. Parrish does the exact same thing, except the arena is a marriage where both women are fighting for survival within a system controlled by a man who deserves neither of them.
The connection: Dual female perspectives where neither woman is what she seems, and the real monster might be the institution of marriage itself.
4. Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney (2021)
Adam and Amelia’s marriage is falling apart. He writes her a letter every anniversary. She never reads them. When they win a weekend trip to a remote Scottish chapel, the isolation forces their secrets to the surface — and Feeney’s signature narrative trick means you can’t trust a single word either of them says.
Alice Feeney is the author I recommend most often to people looking for books like Verity, because she understands the same fundamental trick Colleen Hoover used: make the reader fall in love with a version of events, then reveal that version was a lie. Rock Paper Scissors adds a layer Verity doesn’t have — Adam has face blindness, which means his perception of reality is literally unreliable at a neurological level. The final reveal is devastating. Netflix has optioned this for a six-part series, so read it before the adaptation drops.
Perfect for: Verity fans who want the same “isolated setting + marriage secrets + reality-breaking twist” formula executed by a master of the form.
5. Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris (2016)
Jack and Grace Angel look like the perfect couple. Gorgeous house, elegant dinner parties, impeccable manners. Behind the front door, Jack is a monster — and Grace is trapped in a prison so meticulously designed that no one would believe her if she told them. The claustrophobia of this book is suffocating. You keep waiting for someone to notice, for someone to help, and Paris just tightens the screws.
Where Verity gives you ambiguity — was she a villain or a victim? — Behind Closed Doors gives you clarity that’s almost worse. You know exactly what’s happening. You just can’t stop it. And the final act, when Grace finally makes her move, is one of the most satisfying revenge sequences in the genre.
The Verity connection: The “perfect marriage” facade hiding something monstrous underneath. If Verity’s domestic setting hooked you, this book cranks that claustrophobia to eleven.
6. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (2018)
Vanessa is obsessed with her ex-husband Richard’s new fiancée. She watches. She follows. She warns. And you spend the first hundred pages thinking you’re reading a stalker thriller about a woman who can’t let go. You are wrong about everything.
I don’t want to spoil the twist because the twist IS the book — but I will say this: Hendricks and Pekkanen pull off a structural trick that’s almost identical to what Hoover does in Verity. They let you build an entire narrative in your head, let you get comfortable with it, and then reveal that the narrative was a cage they built around you. The moment you realize what’s actually happening, you’ll flip back to page one and reread the first chapter with your jaw on the floor.
Why it belongs on any books like Verity list: Same “nothing is what it seems” architecture. Same devastating re-contextualization of everything you thought you knew. Same “I need to sit in silence for ten minutes” ending.
7. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García (2020)
This is my wildcard pick, and I’m standing by it. Noemí Taboada — glamorous, sharp, fearless — travels to a decaying mansion in the Mexican countryside to check on her cousin, who sent a desperate letter claiming the house is making her sick. What she finds is a family of English colonizers clinging to faded glory, a husband who controls everything, and a house that seems to have a will of its own.
Mexican Gothic isn’t a traditional thriller. It’s gothic horror with the atmospheric dread turned up to twelve. But if what you loved about Verity was the creeping sense that something is deeply wrong in this house, that the walls themselves are hiding secrets, and that the truth is more disturbing than anything you imagined — Moreno-García delivers all of that with prose that’s genuinely beautiful. This is the book for Verity readers who want to go deeper, darker, and weirder.
The bridge: Isolated house full of secrets. A woman trapped in someone else’s narrative. The unsettling feeling that the truth has been right in front of you, rotting.
8. The Maid by Nita Prose (2022)
Molly Gray is a hotel maid with a very particular way of seeing the world. She notices what others miss. She misses what others notice. And when she finds a dead body in a guest room, her literal-minded approach to truth makes her both the most reliable and most unreliable narrator you’ve ever encountered.
This is a different flavor of books like Verity — lighter in tone, warmer in heart — but the unreliable narrator mechanics are brilliant. Molly tells you exactly what she sees, and because her perception works differently than yours, you’re constantly recalibrating what’s real. It’s a cozy mystery wrapped in a psychological puzzle, and it’s proof that unreliable narration doesn’t always have to come from darkness. Sometimes it comes from a character who is simply, beautifully, different.
For Verity fans who need a palette cleanser: Same narrative trick, opposite emotional register. Read this between the heavier picks on this list so you don’t lose your faith in humanity entirely.
9. My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (2019)
Millicent and her husband have a perfect marriage. Two kids, nice house, solid careers. They also have a hobby: they pick up women, and things go very, very wrong. What makes this book exceptional isn’t the premise — it’s the voice. The husband narrates with the casual, normalized tone of someone describing weekend plans, not murder. The dissonance between how he tells the story and what the story actually is will make your skin crawl in the best possible way.
If Verity fascinated you because of the toxic romance element — the way you were rooting for Lowen and Jeremy even though you knew something was deeply off — My Lovely Wife takes that dynamic and pushes it past the breaking point. This is a love story about two people who are terrible for each other and for the world, and you’ll hate yourself for how invested you get in their relationship.
The Verity parallel: A marriage built on lies, a narrator you shouldn’t trust, and a love story that makes you question your own moral compass.
10. Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest (2026)
I wrote this book, so take this recommendation with whatever grain of salt you need. But here’s why it belongs on a list of books like Verity: because it asks the same fundamental question from a different angle.
Verity asks: what happens when you find out the person you love has been performing their entire identity? Perfect Modern Wife asks: what happens when performing your identity IS the marriage?
Perfect Modern Wife follows a woman navigating the gap between who she is and who her marriage requires her to be — and the psychological thriller at its center is built on the same engine that powers Verity: the terrifying possibility that the person closest to you is someone you’ve never actually met. If you loved Verity’s exploration of performance, manipulation, and the dark side of domestic life, PMW lives in that same neighborhood. It just kicks down a different door.
The book has been optioned for film by my dream writer/director Joanna Tsanis, so if you’re a fan of the book-to-screen pipeline that brought us the Verity adaptation, this is one to watch.
What to Read After Books Like Verity: Your Next Steps
If you’ve made it this far, you’re not a casual reader. You’re someone who wants fiction that destabilizes you — that makes you question narrators, distrust marriages, and sit with the uncomfortable truth that the people we love are also the people most capable of destroying us.
Here’s my recommendation: start with whichever book on this list grabbed you by the throat. If you want the closest Verity experience, go with The Silent Patient or The Wife Between Us. If you want darker, go with My Lovely Wife. If you want weirder, go with Mexican Gothic. If you need a break from the darkness, The Maid will restore your faith just enough to keep going.
And when the Verity movie drops on October 2 — with Anne Hathaway bringing Verity Crawford to life and Dakota Johnson as Lowen — you’ll already have your post-screening reading list locked. Because here’s what I’ve learned from running Serial Chillers Club: the best thrillers don’t end when you close the book. They follow you into the next one.
Read Next
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