Confess
Colleen Hoover, 2015
A broke newcomer takes a last-minute job at a Dallas artist's studio, where anonymous confessions painted on canvas make strangers feel less alone. A warm, witty romance with a current of longing and grief beneath the banter, moving at an easy, curious pace.
Feels like longing, curiosity and hope. About love, identity and art.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy contemporary romance that mixes playful dialogue with questions about identity and hope. The story carries real emotional weight around loss, so it may not suit you if you want a light, breezy read.
Why read it
It pairs quick, witty exchanges with anonymous confessions that make strangers feel less alone, giving you a warm story about love, longing and hope.
A page from the book
The quiet arithmetic of grief: five years, and still counting.
I hate how I always tie Adam in to everything I see and do, and I wonder if and when that will ever go away. It’s been five years since I last saw him. Five years since he passed away. Five years, and I’m wondering if, like the confession in front of me, I’ll forever be comparing my life with him to my life without him. Colleen Hoover.Before she was a bestselling novelist, Colleen Hoover worked as a social worker and a teacher; she self-published her first book, Slammed, in 2012.
Books that feel like this
More by Colleen Hoover
Ugly Love
Colleen Hoover, 2014
A nurse restarting her life falls for a man who offers only sex and no past—and discovers how much pain can hide behind a closed door.
November 9
Colleen Hoover, 2015
A scarred former teen actress and a stranger who poses as her boyfriend make a pact to meet every year on the same date.
Maybe Someday
Colleen Hoover, 2014
A music student who hides her own songwriting listens every night to the guitarist across the courtyard — until he catches her watching.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Confess for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy contemporary romance that mixes playful dialogue with questions about identity and hope. The story carries real emotional weight around loss, so it may not suit you if you want a light, breezy read.
- What is Confess like?
- A warm, witty romance with a current of longing and grief beneath the banter, moving at an easy, curious pace. Feels like longing, curiosity and hope. About love, identity and art.
- What should I read after Confess?
- If you liked Confess, try One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston), It Happened One Summer (Tessa Bailey) and Love, Theoretically (Ali Hazelwood).
A taste of the feed
The nights you swear you'll never forget, and how quietly they go.
Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. They’re everything, and they’re nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They’re so easy to lose.
One Last Stop · Casey McQuiston
How a doctorate turns into a side hustle you never put on the CV.
Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers. But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.
Love, Theoretically · Ali Hazelwood
A blessing for love that doubles as a warning.
I hope you find someone you can’t live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it’s like to have to try and live without them.
The Selection · Kiera Cass
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