Confess by Colleen Hoover Published by Simon and Schuster on March 10th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Goodreads
Winner of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance 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.At age twenty-one, Auburn Reed has already lost everything important to her. In her fight to rebuild her shattered life, she has her goals in sight and there is 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 chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is keeping a major secret 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.To save their relationship, all Owen needs to do is confess. But in this case, the confession could be much more destructive than the actual sin.
Chapter Break is doing a Read Along! During the month of February, join us as we read Confess by Colleen Hoover.
Each Saturday in February, we’ll post our thoughts on the current chapters. Today we are talking about Chapters 19-the end!
Whew. We made it! See below for our thoughts on the last 6 chapters, and the book as a whole.
Julie: (Julie’s thoughts are in purple) 
Lynn: (Lynn’s thoughts are in blue)
*Reminder that this post will contain spoilers *
Julie must be slacking! I know she finished before me, but YEAH – I get to post my thoughts first! Sometimes I need to let you be first 😉
I mentioned last week that I took a week-long break due to emotional stress. But had I realized that I had passed the majority of the stressful scenes, and only had an hour left of reading, I probably would have powered through. Oh well. I took a long break too, but I kinda read ahead so I needed to slow it down. This book was rough on me. Too much emotion, too many characters who need their asses kicked from here to the sun.
Oh great, now Auburn is thinking about apologizing to Trey for HIS attacking her. Seriously. More wishy-washy, hand-wringing about making sure she can see her son. She really needs to stand up for herself! YES she does need to stand up for herself more, these idjits only have the power over her that *she* gives them.
And now, Auburn knows Owen’s secret. I’m glad that’s finally out in the open. It wasn’t really that big a secret. I was kind of disappointed that’s all he was going to tell her. I mean, he has another confession, does he not?
I love this quote (me too):
If a person truly cares about you, they’ll get more pleasure from the way they make you feel, rather than the way you make them feel.
And of course, another Trey is a complete jerk scene. Nothing like encouraging someone to hit you and then arresting him for it. That’s the way to prove your love for Auburn! I sure hope Trey gets his comeuppance. He needs to get more than some comeuppance…
Finally! Auburn stands up to Trey. And Lydia. With some help from her roommate Emory. Thankfully. I especially like the fact that Auburn figures out that she doesn’t want her son growing up with a spineless mother. And to have involved Owen’s dad in the whole scheme was pretty brilliant if you ask me. That! That was awesome how everyone came together to help Auburn out and make things right. Emory was amazing with the way she confronted Trey and pulled his own gun on him to get him to stop the attack on Auburn. Loved that scene. Rock on girlfriend!
And everything works out in the end. Quickly. And somewhat conveniently. Too conveniently. So how did Auburn convince Owen’s dad to get help? Lydia and Trey caved in too easy too. I expected a bigger fight from them, based on what they’ve done so far.
I really liked the epilogue – titled “Five Years Earlier”. Probably my favorite chapter in the whole book. I think CoHo did an excellent job tying everything back together. To Adam at the hospital. To the confessions. To the painting Auburn has kept all this time. I even went back and re-read the scene where Auburn and Owen first meet. How Owen remembers her, but never “met” her finally makes sense. And tying together Auburn’s promise to love Adam AND Owen, even if she shouldn’t. That’s some pretty impressive writing. I really enjoyed it too. Finally, we got to understand how Owen knows Auburn, and how everything is connected. I loved how Owen has been admiring her for so long. The painting! That was just wonderful. Oh – and check this out. CoHo is doing a Q&A over on Goodreads. Loved this question and answer! Check out the rest of the discussion here.
My overall thoughts? I liked Confess. It didn’t blow me away like Hopeless. But still good. Definitely an emotional roller coaster, per usual with CoHo books. I just wish Auburn had more of a backbone when it came to dealing with Lydia and Trey. Though I suppose if she did, we wouldn’t be here. A solid 3 1/2 Stars from me. I gave it 4, just because of all those twigs in my eyes and all the times it made me so mad I wanted to throw the book across the room. Not my CoHo favorite, but a good read. CoHo is great with pulling emotions out of me, but I wanted the ending to be a little less convenient, and more powerful I guess.
Confess Read Along Schedule:
February 6: Read and discuss chapters 1 – 6.
February 13: Read and discuss chapters 7 – 12.
February 20: Read and discuss chapters 13-18.
February 27: Read and discuss chapters 19 – 24. Wrap up and review.
