Books Like Verity: What to Read Next

If you tore through Verity by Colleen Hoover and immediately need another book that messes with your head and your heart, you’re in the right place. I’m Diana Urban, and I write about nerdy women who get trapped in terrifying, stabby-stabby situations and might fall in love while fighting to survive. So trust me, I’ve read my way through basically every “books like Verity” list out there trying to chase that same feeling, so much so that I wrote one myself!

Verity is so addictive because it combines three elements: an unreliable narrator you can’t fully trust, a forbidden romance with someone who might be a killer (or married to one), and a twist that makes you flip back to page one. So let’s dive into some books with similar vibes.

If you want another “am I falling for the wrong person” thriller

• The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins. A modern Jane Eyre retelling where a broke dog-walker starts falling for a recently widowed wealthy man… except his wife might not be as dead as everyone assumes. It has the same slow-creep dread as Verity with a similar “should I trust this guy” mystery.
• You’re Overthinking This (mine!). A steamy, snowbound locked-room thriller. A woman on the run from her ex crashes in a blizzard and shelters with a rugged, handsome stranger, finds a dead woman in his freezer, and decides to seduce him so he won’t kill her, too. But when she falls for him for real, she has to figure out whether he did kill the woman downstairs. If Verity‘s romance plot was your favorite part, this scratches that exact itch.
• Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris. From the outside, it looks like the perfect marriage. From the inside, it’s a nightmare. It has less romance than Verity, but if what hooked you was the horror of realizing the person you love might be a monster, this delivers that gut-punch.
• You by Caroline Kepnes. If you enjoyed reading about Lowen’s slow slide into obsession with Jeremy in Verity, this one’s also told from inside the head of the obsessive one. It’s page-turning in that “train wreck you can’t look away from” sort of way.

Want a free romantic thriller right now? Grab my short story The Last Time I Saw Her Alive. It’s steamy with forbidden romance and a gasp-out-loud twist, and it’s the perfect length to gulp down at lunch or right before bed. And it’s free when you join my newsletter.

If you want the twisty domestic-thriller pacing without as much romance

• The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. Not romance-forward, but if you loved that “can’t trust anyone in the house” feeling in Verity, this has that kind of vibe. I personally found the twist in this one very unsettling (in the best way). Freida GOES THERE.
• Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica. A young mother vanishes, then her neighbor and neighbor’s daughter disappear, too. Eleven years later, the missing girl resurfaces, alive but different. (Creepy!) Told across shifting timelines and narrators, it gives that same “wait, who should I actually believe” whiplash.
• Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. A stranded-on-a-remote-island thriller with a couple whose relationship is falling apart at the exact wrong moment. It has that same paranoid feel where you don’t know if the FMC can trust the MMC.

Best YA read-alike

If you’re looking for a teen version of that same “falling for someone dangerous” feeling:

• These Deadly Games (mine). An intense, pulse-pounding thriller where a girl has to pick off her own friends one-by-one to save her kidnapped sister’s life, with a romance subplot woven through the danger. To say more than that would be a spoiler (saying this much probably already is!), but trust me, the vibe matches. It’s free on KU!