Books like Verity

By Colleen Hoover

For intimacy clouded by suspicion, an unsettling written account or a household shaped by secrets.

For a household ruled by the past

Daphne du Maurier

Shares a woman’s unease inside another woman’s household, but suspicion grows through the dead first wife’s reputation and the people preserving it.

The difference: Slower Gothic suspense with far less explicit sex.

Alex Michaelides

Shares an obsession with interpreting a disturbing personal account, but uses a therapist’s investigation of a painter who refuses to speak.

The difference: More clinical investigation and less romantic entanglement.

Gillian Flynn

Shares the fear that an intimate partner’s account conceals something dangerous, but widens the suspicion into a public investigation of a marriage.

The difference: More social satire and competing viewpoints.

Sources and book details

Collected’s editorial comparisons, informed by the descriptions and reading profiles.