After coming off the last Colleen Hoover book, I am just questioning everything. I know some people love love love this book and others thought it was meh. I'm conflicted about this one, but I did like it enough to give it the extra star.
Confess follows Auburn, a recent transplant from Oregon to Texas. Her only memories from Texas five years prior were not entirely good ones. During that trip, she was saying goodbye to her childhood sweetheart and only love, who shortly thereafter died from cancer. Now she's twenty and trying to survive on her own, even though she has family (in a sense) very close by.
As she's walking home one day she spots various confessions left outside of a studio. Some are silly while others are heartbreakingly sad. Next to the confessions just so happens to be a help wanted sign - and that's how we meet the boy.
Owen Gentry is an artist. He takes confessions from other people and paints them so they come to life. The city loves them and he makes a comfortable income from selling them, but he has secrets of his own he can't confess. And they happen to revolve around Auburn.
This was a book about addiction and if I had known that, I may have been more hesitant to read this. For personal reasons, I have a serious issue with it and I have found very few books capture it without sounding either offensive or just plain wrong. I give CoHo credit that the way she handled that was good - addiction is ugly and mean and hurtful. It's not glamourous. They want to stop but they can't and their families suffer from it. The family members feel shame and hurt and anger. The end result was written with eloquence. I was impressed.
I did like this book and my heart did hurt for the characters at various parts of the book. However, I didn't ugly cry like I have at her other books. Maybe it was because I listened to this as an audiobook, but I did not get as emotionally invested in this as I have with her other books.
The insta-love bothered me.
Even they say they fell in love in ten days. That's a bit bizarre to have this level of love for each other. I could understand lust - and holy hell the UST in this is insane - but I didn't get the burning passion they felt in such a short time. It all happened way too fast.
However, I did like it. I love her writing style and knowing all the confessions are real made it all the more beautiful.
Final rating: 4 stars
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