Lowen has one book to her name, and not too many prospects. She is invited to a meeting at her publishers, where she is made an offer; move to the country mansion of bestselling author Verity Crawford, now incapacitated because of an accident, and ghost-write her next books. At the creepy lake house, Lowen meets the non-responsive Verity, and is provided access to her study and all her notes.
Among the notes, Lowen comes across a manuscript which is Verity’s autobiographical account titled “So Be It”, in which she describes herself as a seriously disturbed human, obsessively in love with Jeremy and jealous of her twin daughters because they were competing for his attention. She goes on to write how she wished for their death and was glad they actually did, though their deaths were due to an allergic reaction and drowning respectively.
Lowen falls in love with Jeremy, and she shares this manuscript with Jeremy along with the belief that Verity is not ill at all, but faking it. This causes Jeremy to react explosively, kill Verity and make it look like a natural death. Post that, Lowen finds a note describing the manuscript as a writing exercise designed to help her think evil so she could better design her books’ villains.
The book reads exactly like one would expect; a thriller written by a romance author, thereby its neither a good romance nor a good thriller. For the most part, the scenes are repetitive, and there is a very contrived and forced effort to create a creepy atmosphere, though there is no logical reason why a lake house should be creepy. The Verity character is very poorly designed, since it would seem like a best-selling author would have better options at her disposal than Verity did. The end, despite being a twist, seemed anticlimactic and trite. I suppose I will never be a great Colleen Hoover fan, I have been disappointed by both her best-selling books.