Review ~ Confess by Colleen Hoover

Title: Confess
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: NA Contemporary Romance
Published: March 10th 2015

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…

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Confess began with Auburn and showed me how deep her feelings ran for her first love, Adam. She was 15 years old and the emotional connection these two had was intense. I cried in this first chapter because it was heartbreaking to see what they had and what they had to do.

Jump five years into the future and we see Auburn has moved back to Texas. It wasn't revealed straight away why she did so, and I couldn't see why she would want to when she had no one close around her. She was lonely, in a new city and wanted to make as much money as she could. She stumbled across a help wanted sign when reading confessions on a window and straight into Owen's life.

Owen is a talented artist and the way he used people's anonymous confessions to inspire his art was clever. He has always been a good guy but his past still haunts him and he doesn’t have a lot of self worth when it came to Auburn. Auburn was torn between her head and her heart, and the decision wasn't easy because she was unable to get what she needed desperately. However, I loved seeing Auburn and Owen together, they had a strong connection but there were always people or obstacles that kept them apart.

I liked how this book kept me on the edge of my seat and I always had a nagging question in the back of my mind on how Owen and Auburn had crossed paths before.  The suspense build up was fantastic as the story unravelled slowly. The tension between these two was beautiful and I could see both of them struggling to hold back. The way Hoover pieced this story together with the paintings was beautiful. It was amazing to actually see the paintings that Owen painted and the confessions that inspired him.

Even though this was a great read, it isn't my favourite book of Hoovers. Ugly Love and Maybe Someday are at the top of my list. It was still an intense read, but I felt that I didn’t connect to the characters as much as the previous books that I have read. It was still a difficult and beautiful story, and Hoover fans will still enjoy it as she added art to this powerful story.

Complimentary copy provided by Simon & Schuster Australia in exchange for an honest review.

Other reviews featuring Colleen Hoover

Ugly Love

Maybe Someday

Hopeless series

Hopeless #1

Losing Hope #2