Review: Confess

Title: Confess

Author: Colleen Hoover

Date of Publication: March 10, 2015

Formats Available: Paperback, E-book

Buy This Book: Amazon.com

Synopsis: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover, a new novel about risking everything for love—and finding your heart somewhere between the truth and lies. 

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…

My Review:

Confess is a hard novel for me to review because I still have such mixed feelings about it. I started off this novel thinking it was merely okay, then started getting bored and disliking it, and then making a complete 180 and loving it once all the secrets were revealed. I almost gave up on this one and I'm so happy I didn't, pushing though the first half was definitely worth it! 

To be honest, I was completely bored for the first 150 pages or so. I didn't like Auburn, I didn't like Owen, and I didn't like how overly dramatic they were. The story was boring and reading was starting to feel more like a chore than something I really wanted to do. Nothing was happening, there wasn't any sort of drama or revelation, there wasn't even much character development. Not only that but I was extremely confused about the relationships between certain characters and events, after reading the end of the novel I realized it was intended to be this way, but it sure made the first half hard to get through. 

However, once I got past the halfway mark this novel made a complete turn around and I found myself completely engrossed by the story. Learning the truth about Auburn and Owen changed my whole opinion of them and the things they had to go through made me respect them even more. Likewise most of the excitement didn't happen until the last half of the novel and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen between Auburn, Trey, and Owen. It's hard to review this novel without giving anything away, but trust me when I say the last half of this book definitely made up for the lackluster first half.

One of the things that made rating this novel difficult was, even though I gained so much respect for Auburn and Owen once I found out their stories, I still didn't necessarily like them. However, though I didn't really like them, I still respected them and maybe that's what made all the difference. They both had so many things going on in their lives that were kept in the dark until the very end of the novel that it's hard to fully appreciate them until you've learned everything. Though they weren't my favorite I still ended up liking and respecting them in my own way. 

Confess is unlike anything I've ever read, and though the story isn't necessarily anything new there's just something special about it. Though I wouldn't say it was my favorite it was an enjoyable read and I'm excited to try a few more novels by Hoover!

4/5