Confess
2015
- man-woman relationships
- artists' studios
- artists
- secrets
- confession
- fiction
- fiction, romance, contemporary
- ateliers d'artiste
- romans, nouvelles
- relations entre hommes et femmes
The story
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.
What it’s like
Warm Texas light through the high windows of a paint-streaked Dallas studio, with turpentine in the air, canvases stacked against brick, and the hush of long afternoons broken by the scrape of a palette knife. The prose is conversational and intimate, with short confessional chapters that feel like late-night talks, and the mood is an ache of longing braided with dread. Its pacing builds in slow, charged scenes of flirtation and then tightens into emotional pressure as a buried secret presses on every tender moment. The sexual content is frank and fairly explicit, and the story carries heavy themes of grief, guilt, and betrayal, with some raw emotional scenes; violence is largely offstage and never gory. Expect a romance where two wounded people circle each other and the question of honesty becomes the real tension. It suits a reader who wants a steamy, emotionally heavy romance to get lost in on a rainy evening, and someone comfortable with adult material and a bittersweet, cathartic arc.
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