Review: Confess

Reviewer: Kelsey
Author: Colleen Hoover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 306
Rating: 5 out of 10 (this makes me SO sad)

Summary (I confess that I need Goodreads): Auburn Reed has her entire life mapped out. Her goals are in sight and there’s no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn’t expect to find a deep attraction to the enigmatic artist who works there, Owen Gentry.

For once, Auburn takes a risk and puts her heart in control, only to discover Owen is keeping major secrets from coming out. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything important to Auburn, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it.

The last thing Owen wants is to lose Auburn, but he can’t seem to convince her that truth is sometimes as subjective as art. All he would have to do to save their relationship is confess. But in this case, the confession could be much more destructive than the actual sin… 

What I think: Okay, so, here's the thing. I absolutely love Colleen Hoover. I follow her on Facebook and Snapchat and I might have a little girl crush on her because I think she is hilarious and perfect and I wish she was my friend. She's simply fantastic. That sad, I'm really sad to say, this book wasn't my favourite (Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover is though, so you understand my sadness). 

The biggest problem I had with this novel was the insta-love. It's such a mistake to have that in the novel. I understand that it was due to a large surprise plot point but I don't care. I could understand it being one-sided then, but it wasn't. That just made it worse for me. I wanted something a little more realistic (in a fictional kind of way, of course). 

I did, however, love the concept. Maybe Someday had music; Confess had paintings. That was great. They were beautiful and helped me to connect to the book more. I think that the cover is perfectly wonderful and the characters had amazing depth and backstory (aside from the insta-love). I also was interested in the confessions that were used in this novel. They came from real people. What a wonderful way to include fans in the writing process and to connect with them. That's one of the reasons that I love the author so much. 

Sadly, this novel was just missing that spark. There just wasn't enough time. It was too short. They fell in love too soon. It's made worse by the fact that the writing is so good and the language is smart enough for the characters to be real people. BUT NOBODY FALLS IN LOVE THIS FAST. It's creepy.

Recommendation: Check out one of Colleen Hoover's other novels first. Check out Ugly Love (becoming a movie with super hot actors...just saying) or Maybe Someday and it's wonderful sound track that will have you falling in love with a musician as well. Confess was okay but it should have been CoHo Fantastic. 

[Fun aside: Kristen and I went to go get this book together on release day. Our local Chapters is horrible with putting books out on release day but we went anyway. We searched for about an hour, wandering up and down aisles. We searched for it on the computer (we are stupid, we should have done that first). The computer informed us that it was, in fact, in stock. Excited, we checked the selves again. Nothing. We checked the computer once more. Two in stock. We stood by the computer, whining that we might not get the book that we so badly wanted. What if there was only one copy. Kristen and I agreed that it would be a Hunger Games style battle to the death. While we debated various ways to kill each other should we ever find a copy of the book, we looked to the shelf next to us. Kristen found it, practically screaming, "There it is!" And there is was. Two lonely copies. No where near the rest of the CoHo books. I don't think either of us had ever moved so fast. There was no battle to the death but we came close, almost falling on our faces as we ripped the books off the shelf. We went home right away to read them. It didn't take too long. Thank you Chapters, for saving us from the Book Games.]

[Edit: we went to Chapters before release date for this novel and found it there by chance after looking for it even though we were well aware that release date wasn't for another week. We are stupid. Thank you Kristen for reminding me.]