Jessie Burton has produced another bestseller. I loved The Miniaturist, and so I was a bit worried that this one would disappoint. It didn’t.

We flirt between Rose (the present) and Elise and Connie (the past) as Rose tries to work out if her mum is alive or dead, and why she abandoned her.

Jessie weaves a story of parental bonds, love, relationships and assessing what we need in life. I really enjoyed this book and found myself liking all of the characters, it’s a good story, very well told.

Enjoyed this book greatly! The story it follows shows an interpretation of the knock on impact on behaviour and makes for a gripping read.

'The Confession' is an engrossing tale of the entwined stories of three women. The characters are deep and complex and are a true joy to read about, even if they aren't always easy to like. The book has left me with many thoughts and reflections and will stay with me for a while.

I really enjoy books that mix the past and the present and this is just the story to be told in that style. While the settings and time periods weren't quite as evocative as they could be, the characters are strong and thought-provoking. This a book that must be read.

Thank you to Netgalley, Jessie Burton and Pan Macmillan for my arc of The Confession in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: The novel follows a young woman in the 80s who falls in love with another woman, a novelist who sweeps her off her feet and into an unknown world of novels, and movies and new experiences. It flashes then to 2017 where the daughter of Elise is desperately trying to find information about the mother who disappeared when she was only one years old. The ageing novelist was the last one to see her alive.

This is a difficult book to review, I loved Jessie's book The Miniaturist but found The Muse difficult and I've found The Confession to be the same. Maybe it's just that I don't get on with literary fiction, I don't know. I just feel most of the time like its trying too hard to be something incredible. If that makes any sense! The writing is so flowery, the sentences seem short and sharp and too... I don't even know how to describe it, just weird, not sentences in their usual form. Perhaps I'm just not a fan of 'powerful' novels, I find as I get older I want to read books I enjoy, that take me on an adventure, teach me something or make me happy. The Confession is none of these things.
This is more like reading one of those essay's you find in collections, you enjoy then when they're short and interesting but to turn one into 400+ pages just feels a bit much.
The other issue is that the characters are really not likeable, Elise is flakey and at times a bit pathetic, Connie is manipulative and kind of gives off the vibe of being a bit... well, predatory I guess. Rose was so aimless and seemed to have no 'get up and go' about her. Plus an unsatisfactory ending is always a disappointment.

What’s it About?
It's about Elise, who in 1980 falls in love with writer Connie Holden and follows her to LA, and it's about Rose, three decades later, looking for answers to the mystery of her mother who disappeared when she was a baby. Rose finds out the last person to see her Mum was Constance Holden, the now reclusive elderly writer and she goes looking for a confession.

What I liked:T
he Miniaturist was good. This is better. I devoured this book, I absolutely loved it; it's funny because when I was reading it I kept thinking about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo which I read recently and also loved, I think because there are similarities in the way the stories unfold and the link between past and present. I loved how the story jumped from Elise's to Rose's and back again, how strong each narrative voice was and how seamlessly it all flowed. I loved the language and the description and the way it made me feel. I highlighted so many parts that just made me all 'yes, yes that', particularly with regards to Rose and her boyfriend, and I was honestly so swept up, both in the story of this girl who's struggled to find her place because what chance do you have if you're not even good enough for your own Mum, and this other girl who has fallen in love with this older woman, this celebrity almost who seems to have it all together and who is sweeping her along in this tidal wave of a life. It's beautifully written and cleverly woven and I was utterly absorbed from start to finish. I want to read it again. And the cover. Oh my.

What I liked less:
I gave it 5 stars y'all, I can't think of anything I didn't like.

In 1980 author, Constance Holden, has started a relationship with Elise after a chance encounter; two years later the couple are living in LA with Connie writing her second novel while her first is being transformed for the big screen. In 2017 we meet Rosie, who has spent her life searching for more information about her mother has been handed two novels by her dad and told the author once knew her mum well.

This happens at a time when Rosie is in the midst of several personal dilemmas; struggling with long term boyfriend, Joe's approach to the business he once seemed so keen they set up that she invested most of her life savings into; with her father remarried and now living in France and Joe's family seemingly keen to find fault in her every move, Rosie desire to find out more about her mother and hopefully as a result herself just strengthens.

Once again Jessie Burton's beautiful writing had me hooked, with this time less on the plot but the characters, I was completely invested in Rose and her search for information and direction. The Confession focuses on the complication of human relationships, both romantic and friendship; all of the characters were flawed but easy to sympathise with.  I think my favourite aspect was the portrayal of so many strong female leads, it's so refreshing to read a book with a female character at its centre who's not looking for or driven by a romantic interest.

The Confession by Jessie Burton is a powerful novel about women, identity, our sense of self and belonging. Told in two alternating time frames of the present (2017) and the 1980’s we watch as Rose Simmons tries to find out what happened to her mother Elise Morceau who was last seen in New York when Rose was a newborn.

Elise and Constance (Connie) Holden were lovers who meet quite by chance one day and quickly become inseparable. Elise is much younger than Connie, is impressionable, lonely and finds herself completely in Connie’s thrall. Her mother is dead and she has a complicated relationship with her father and in Connie she has somebody to take care of her and somewhere that feels like home. Connie is a celebrated novelist whose debut is being turned into a Hollywood movie taking both her and Elise to LA, a city where dreams are both made and shattered and appearance is everything.

In the present day Rose has felt the absence of having a mother her entire life. Her dad is unable to tell her anything about her disappearance other than one day she was there and then she was gone. She is in a long term relationship with her boyfriend Joe and works as a waitress but is restless. Her best friend has a young daughter, another baby on the way and is an online influencer. whilst Joe is planning to set up his own business but hasn’t really got round to it yet, delaying and procrastinating to the point where Rose resents him. She is waiting for her life to start, for the next thing to happen, the thing is she doesn’t really know what she wants and what will make her happy. When her dad tells her that her mother and Constance were lovers and that Connie was the last person to see Elise she decides to track the reclusive Connie down to find out once and for all what happened.

The dual timeline is elegantly handled and creates a beautiful narrative flow, taking us from modern day London, to the London of the early 1980s, to LA and its famous actresses, the Hollywood industry and New York. No matter what time frame or location the sense of place and time is impeccable. I was transported to the west coast of America, a place of glitz and glamour but also of great loneliness and darkness. I found these sections quite melancholic and with an overall aura of sadness despite the wall to wall sunshine, beaches and swimming pools.

Rose, Elise and Connie are three wonderfully written and compelling characters. They felt so incredibly real to me, leaping from the page and planting themselves firmly in my imagination. They are perfectly imperfect; they make mistakes, they make poor decisions, they behave in terrible ways and they hurt other people. I loved that. I loved reading women who are struggling to find their way in the world, who are doing their best, but like all of us are flawed.

These three women are powerful protagonists and I found myself identifying and falling in love with them in different ways. I particularly liked Connie whose intelligence and no-nonsense personality oozes from the pages. We meet her as both a woman in her late 30s at the peak of her career and in her 70s, writing a book for the first time in nearly 4 decades and physically in poor health. I found viewing her at these two different parts of her life an emotional thing – watching as a vibrant woman becomes diminished in body but not in mind.

Overall this is a book about women, our friendships, our relationships with others and ourselves and the complexity of finding out who you are. It is at beautiful, timely, intimate and emotional and the writing is pin sharp. I highly recommend this is intelligent and compelling narratives which make you think are your thing.

An engaging story about a daughter's quest to discover the truth about her mother who had disappeared 34 years before.. Jumping between 1980s and 2017 the story reveals itself gradually and we build up a picture of Elise, young,impressionable, searching for the next adventure and finding it with author Connie, an older woman who seduces Elise and bewitches her into going to LA with her when her novel is being filmed. The glamour and excitement of 80's Hollywood fails to capture Elise' s imagination and she sees thru the facade of the parties and bling., her dissatisfaction growing as she sees how Connie has been taken in by it. Ultimately Elise is drawn away by a new lover resulting in an unexpected pregnancy, and as she spirals out of control into undiagnosed post partum depression her distress and agony is palpable. Years later her daughter finds an elderly Connie and under false pretences she Inveigles her way into the household and attenpts to unravel the past.
Intriguing and decadent, this story swings us around as we sympathise with different characters in the different eras. The Confession when it comes only partly tells the tale, but our imagination fills in the gaps more than adequately.
An excellent story and one which I thoroughly enjoyed -Jessie Burton has done it again!

An entertaining read while at the same time being clever and thought provoking. It’s highly evocative and I lost myself in it, devouring each chapter. A rare 5 stars from me.

I really enjoyed this book. Rose has never known anything about her mother, who walked out when she was a baby. Nobody knows what happened to her, or even if she is still alive. Then her father tells her that her mother was in a relationship with another woman when he met her, and he thinks this woman, a writer, may have some answers. Rose manages to track her down. The story is told in 2 time frames, one charting the relationship of Elise and Connie back in the 80s, and the other in the present as Rose searches for answers. This is a really good read which will keep you guessing to the end. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
Copied to Goodreads.

The Confession is a dual narrative of events taking place in the early 1980s and the present day, connected by three women - Elise, Connie and Rose. We experience the earlier era through the eyes of Elise, a young woman defined by her fey beauty, in the third person, and the later years in the first person narrative of Rose, Elise's daughter now in her mid-thirties. The story follows Rose's efforts to understand what happened to Elise, who disappeared in New York when Rose was a few months old. Elise's former lover Connie, an iconic novelist, provides the only link and Rose manages to inveigle herself into Connie's London home under a false identity with the aim of discovering the truth about her errant mother.

However the plot of The Confession is merely the tip of this literary iceberg. Everything that matters lies under the surface. The themes of The Confession - self-identity, female empowerment, freedom of choice, motherhood - dominate the novel until the story and even the characters begin to feel almost incidental.

This is not necessarily a criticism. In most literary fiction, the story and characters are vehicles for the author's personal philosophies, or an issue they want to explore. But because Jessie Burton's best writing is so breathtakingly brilliant, and her characters so vividly imagined, it can be frustrating when both are suppressed by what can feel like a preoccupation with abstract theories. Essentially, the themes are better developed than the story itself. Like a house built on strong foundations but without windows or a roof.

I adored the opening of The Confession and - unlike some other reviewers - I found the ending satisfactory. In particular there is an event towards the end which breaks something of a socio-literary mould that I thought was brave and refreshing. The best creative writing sort of bookends the novel, with the middle feeling more like a very long essay on feminism and female empowerment between 1980 and 2018. And it's a fantastic essay; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it - but I can see why some readers have been turned off.

I personally think Jessie Burton is one of our greatest living writers and I want to read all her books (I loved The Miniaturist; haven't yet read The Muse but will soon). I also think that The Confession is a book she needed to write - I'd bet that its themes were in her head before the characters made themselves known. However, Burton obviously has a prolific and unstoppable imagination (evidenced by the synopses of Connie's three novels, all described in glorious detail within The Confession) and I'm quietly hoping her next novel allows her to indulge that imagination more freely.

In 1982 Elise and Constance (Connie) are lovers. Connie is an enigmatic author and Elise is young, lost and looking for her place in the world. She follows Connie to LA, where her latest novel is being adapted into a film, and lives her life through her until it becomes too much and she runs away.

In 2017 Rose lives with her lacklustre, long-term boyfriend Joe, brought up by her father, Matthew after her mother left them. Bright but lacking direction, Rose works at a cafe. Unambitious and passive Joe is living off his parents whilst unsuccessfully working on getting his festival food business, 'Joerritos', off the ground. We learn that Elise is Rose's mother, but she left them when Rose was two years old and that no one has heard or seen from her since. Feeling like her life is slipping away, with no purpose, Rose decides to find out what happened to her mother. She realises she needs to unpick Elise and Connie's complex relationship to understand what happened.

What follows is an intimate exploration of women's lives, through Rose, Elise and Constance. None of the male characters had any real depth. Emotional and evocative, with a focus on betrayal and storytelling, I found the plot and the protagonists difficult to relate to, it felt drawn out and distant. Burton's prose is beautiful as always, but I struggled to find hope in the plot or the protagonists,they didn't hold my attention. Constance and Elise seemed to be united by a lack of action, or agency, with only Rose seizing opportunities to make the changes she wanted in her life. I was disappointed with the ending in terms of the outcomes and unexplained elements, felt I was missing something.

Perhaps I was not in the right frame of mind to read the book. Having read about others' love for this book, I have a feeling I will be in a minority when it's published later this week.

I really enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. I liked the setting of London and Los Angeles (with a few other places), I thought the characters of Rose and Connie were both relatable and believable and I enjoyed the way the book flipped between the 1980s and today.

At the start of the book I felt sorry for Rose as she’s quite a sad character, but the book follows her search for her long lost mother and she really grows and changes as she discovers what happened to her mother. I almost wanted a stronger, happier ending but real-life isn’t like that, so the book ends on a positive note – even if it’s not quite what you thought would happen.

Well I must admit that this wasn't what I was expecting from jessie Burton. I was thinking more gothic but that is alright coz it was still brilliant.

Changing from Elise's aspect in 1980s to Rose's aspect in 2017 and 2018, mother and daughter. Rose has always known her mother was missing from her family life, but she didn't know why. In this story she is on the case to track down Connie who saw Elise last back in the mid 80s. Elise sets herself up as Laura and gets a job as personal assistant to Connie to find out what happened to her mother.

Swapping between Elise and Rose in their current lives it all comes to a crunch when something happens along the same wavelength and Rose has to decide which path to choose.

Lovingly written by Jessie whose book "The Miniaturist" came across as gothic to this one which comes across as a lost person trying to find herself as well as what happened to her mother was an enjoyable story and I would gladly read another JB book. This genre suits Jessie and I look forward to another new release.

The Confession by Jessie Burton is a gem. And that comes from someone who only moderately enjoyed the much-loved Miniaturist. That bestseller was elaborate and rich in detail and complexity; this is more streamlined and – for me – more affecting.

Jessie has always been a great creator of characters and this has come to the fore in this intriguing book that examines a group of women and their crossed paths and missed opportunities. Our main character is Rose, a young woman in London who is searching for her mother who abandoned her when she was just a baby. A revelation from her father leads Rose to the house of Constance Holden, a now-reclusive novelist in Hampstead who was the last person to see her mother, Elise Morceau, alive back in New York in 1983.
In fact, Constance and Elise were lovers and, as we come to understand, had a complex relationship that Rose must slowly and carefully unpick if she is truly to understand the woman who left her behind.

What I loved most about this story is that it felt like a powerful study on women – women of all ages, from different walks of life. What does it mean to be a woman? How is our identity and our path wrapped up and defined by who we love, who we are friends with, and who we become? How do we challenge what seems persistent and intransigent stereotypes to become our fluid, complicated selves? Jessie looks at women at different stages of life, considering how life experience changes us, and yet how so many of us continue to hold secrets and pain closely, fearful of revealing our true messy selves.

What has caught my eye though are the comments on Goodreads about the ending, how for some it has been anti-climactic. I found this fascinating as the ending is, in my eyes, flawless. Impossible to unpick without spoiling it for you but it’s interesting to me how perhaps some will read this without digging beneath the surface. This is a beautiful portrayal of complicated women.

The story of a mother and child and a woman who affects both their lives. A story that examines relationships and the choices people make in their lives, to stay or go, and how those choices ripple through the lives of others. How people make their stories and the difficulties in making changes to those stories.

Rose is an engaging and sympathetic character, still feeling the absence of her mother in her life, which appears to be stagnating. In her search for her mother she encounters Constance, a once successful author, who featured prominently in Elise's (Rose's mother) life for a time in the 80s.

The story alternates between the present and the early 1980s at the height of Constance's fame. Constance and Elise have a passionate yet turbulent relationship. Constance is assured and confident in her choices; Elise is insecure yet impulsive, unsure of her own identity and her place in the world. And then a trip to California tips the scales further in their relationship.

The story is well told and the narrative pace is sustained throughout. The initial premise is rather unlikely but any misgivings are lost as events proceed. The conclusion is convincing although not entirely satisfying.

A novel which adds to the reputation of this successful author.

Rose Simmons has a dead end job and a relationship that's floundering. She has never known her mother, Elise Morceau as she had disappeared when Rose was just a baby. Her father gives her a book and tells Rose that the author used to know her mother and might have some knowledge about what had happened to her. Intrigued, Rose secures herself a companion to the now famous author, Constance Holden. Rose changes her name to "Laura Brown". She is desperate to find answers and she hopes Constance will help her achieve this.

Rose has spent her whole life wondering what had happened to her mother. The last person who had seen her mother was Constance Holden. The story is told through two timelines, 1980's Los Angeles and London 2018. The two stories weave seamlessly in and out of each other. We get descriptions of places and people. The main characters are strong independent women. The story is well written and has a steady pace. I did feel that the last chapter was a bit rushed. Did Rose find her mother? You will need to read this book to find out.

I would like to thank Netgalley, Pan Macmillan and the author Jessie Burton for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A lot more literary than her other novels, I tore through The Confession. It's brilliant and so addictive, I truly needed to know what happened in the end. The characters are all wonderfully, realistically complicated and fully realised creations. A total triumph.

I have really enjoyed reading this book. Once I picked it up I had to keep reading until I finished! Totally different to her other books. There are 2 timelines in this book - the present and the past which eventually converge. We meet a cast of very strong women and explore their relationships. Rosie is searching for her mother whom she never knew/cannot remember. Her father eventually gives her some information that leads her on a journey of discovery of her roots and identity. Another great read from this author. Thanks to netgalley for the preview read!

Constance and Elise have a complex relationship as successful writer and one time muse. Their relationship will have a profound effect on both their lives. A very well written story of relationships, love, loss and regrets.