What a fantastic debut novel. I’m always a bit nervous for a chunkier book but I feel like I flew through this and if you love your complex characters this one will be right up your street.

The book centres around three generations of women and the story is ever changing depending on the perspective. There is so much packed into this and definitely some dark themes explored; 9/11, abortion, women’s rights, sexual assault and religion to name a few. I was constantly guessing at what would happen and the author leaves us with mini cliffhangers to keep the suspense. It’s at parts an uncomfortable read and you know disaster is looming around the corner but I’m in awe at how immersed I felt in the story.

The characters are SO well developed and you feel the depths of emotion and injustice they experience. Confessions was so much more than I was expecting.

A well accomplished debut.

Told in part as diaries/memories from the POV of four women, across three generations.

A captivating book, though not for the faint hearted as the plot and relationships are so intricately woven that a quick read is impossible, with the movement between characters names and timelines at times so convoluted that the reader needs to take their time and absorb it all.

After an invested and enjoyable read, a disappointing ending for me.

3.5*

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin General UK.

This is a novel to read slowly as there were lots of parts to digest and enjoy. Some tough moments but in the lives of three women, there would be. I think this is a nice look at friendships and hardships and everything in between. Loved the US and Irish connections. I am looking forward to what this author does next.

In general, I enjoy domestic suspense novels and there was certainly plenty of intrigue in this story of three generations of women spanning 50 years and two continents. However, with its fractured timeline and multiple narrators, the novel raised more questions than it answered. ‘Confessions’ was like the jigsaw puzzle pieces tattooed on Maire’s arm, but they didn’t fit together to create a coherent whole and I was left feeling frustrated and confused at the end. The Scream School game device added nothing to the narrative and aspects of the plot such as Scarlett’s imprisonment were insufficiently developed, and yet the novel felt overlong.

Many of the reviews that I have read of this novel express surprise that it is a debut and I would agree 100%. This reads like an accomplished novelist who has found her voice rather than a debut.

The book begins telling the story of Cora(line), who loses her father in 9/11 and feels lost in New York City. A letter from an unknown aunt propels her across the Atlantic and the story moves on to hear about her mother and aunt's lives growing up in Ireland and then a third story (won't say who) is also told.

All in all, a moving story above love, loss. grief and many more issues which I really enjoyed.

I really enjoyed this book. It covered a lot of topics and I really warmed to the characters. Set between Ireland and America during some real turning points in the countries histories. I felt a lot of emotions reading this one and will remember it for time to come.

In September 2001 the world changes and it certainly does so for 16-year-old Cora Brady, who like many others posts pictures of her missing father, Michael. She’s all alone now, her mother dying seven years previously. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from her estranged aunt Róisín in Ireland, who is now not only her legal guardian but also offering her a home in Burtonport, Donegal, which she accepts. This is a family saga, the story of three generations of women,
Maire, Cora‘s mother, Róisín, Cora‘s aunt and Cora’s daughter Lyca.

I thoroughly enjoy this debut novel which has a constantly changing tone depending on whose narrative is. At times it’s haunting, some of the characters are certainly haunted by what’s gone before. Is the story of power that individuals over others, there’s conflict and tragedy, injustice and trauma as well as being a story of well concealed secrets. There’s love and care, there’s mystery but it’s mostly a novel about finding the strength to overcome major challenges. It’s an ambitious first novel, it’s very creative and beautifully written.

I find it becomes increasingly immersive, I want to know and understand. Some of their stories are tough, heartbreaking and leaving them with real issues to either overcome or go under. It makes me feel a range of emotions from anger to sympathy and empathy.

The characters are the main features inevitably in a tale like this. None of them are run of the mill, all are interesting, and quite deep making it hard to understand them at times but I enjoy the puzzle. Each one feels unique and they have a different voice. I like Lyca the best as she has less angst and there’s more hope there! The dynamics between them fascinating as they struggle or compete, they’re complex and their stories are woven together with skill.

Overall, it’s an engaging and compelling read and I’m sure that this author has a bright future ahead of her.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Penguin General UK, Viking for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

A wonderful story about three generations of women, all affected by the oldest woman's mental illness which reverberates through their lives. The story is engrossing, the writing is beautiful and although very little happens at times it's never boring and never drags. I found the switch to the second person narration for Máire a little confusing and strange and it briefly interrupted the flow but then I felt that it actually added another dimension to the wonderful story-telling. Highly recommended.

I’m not sure I should be reviewing this book. I found it a confusing read. It lost me when the other points of view took up the narrative. The style definitely took me out of my comfort zone.

What can I say about this book! A solid 5 stars - I was completely absorbed from beginning to end. The story was immersive, the writing sublime and the characters were so well developed! A wonderful new writer, and I can't wait to see what comes forth in the future. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance reader copy.

I couldn’t stop reading this accomplished debut novel. 'Confessions' gets off to a dramatic beginning – New York, September 2001, the day the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre were attacked. And that’s where teenage Cora’s father works. There’s her slow realisation that he won’t be coming home. Help comes from an unexpected quarter – an Aunt Roísín she didn’t know she had, and it’s away to Ireland and a new life.

Rather than following Cora’s fresh start in Ireland, the story switches back to describe two sisters growing up and struggling with the sudden loss of their father. Their mother takes to her bed and the sisters, Maire and Roísín, do their best. Maire is a brilliant artist but has mental health issues. Fortunately there’s Michael who adores her and is like a brother to Roísín. We’re also with Maire when she earns a scholarship to New York and her struggles to fit in with a narrative shift told interestingly in the second person.

Almost like a character in itself is the big old mansion outside the village, once a stately home, that has become a refuge for women seeking an alternative lifestyle. Known as The Screamers, it offers a new chance first to Maire, and later the home for Roísín and the returning young Cora. It is where Cora’s daughter, Lyca, digs into the past and finds some long buried secrets.

In 'Confessions' we have the repeated themes of girls growing up without a father, teen pregnancies, too much freedom or too much restraint. These young women are all smart enough to do well in a world that accepts them for who they are, but it’s going to take more recent generations – Cora, and then Lyca – for that to happen, and a more modern Ireland. But it’s the long buried secrets that keep the reader on their toes to the end. How will they disturb the fragile memories Cora in particular has of her parents?

And the writing is wonderful, finely tuned to each character and allowing them to tell their story, vivid and at times very intense. The setting of New York in particular is an interesting highlight – it comes through as a walker’s city, shown from the ground up, as well as a place of surprising vistas when seen from a high-rise building. The contrast with a small Irish town couldn’t be more stark – the closed-in feel of the early interiors, then Screamers with its warren of rooms.

This is a well put-together story, the threads of the different characters carefully woven in and, at the same time, written from the heart. I was glad to receive this advance reader copy thanks to Netgalley, in return for an honest review. 'Confessions' is due for release late January and a four-and-a-half star read from me.

I felt rather like this novel ate me up and spat me out. At first I was intrigued, then engrossed, confused, curious, fascinated, more confused then engrossed again.

Whilst it is easiest summed up by saying this is a story of three generations of women, that doesn't really get to the guts of the book. It covers Ireland, religion, family, education, New York, unplanned pregnancy, art, travel, womens rights, emigration, madness, AIDS, 9/11, Roe v Wade, Irish abortion vote - to pick out some of the themes.

The reader has to work as the generations use different names for the same cast of characters and individual stories are told from a variety of perspectives and timeframes. These are cross hatched with gaming episodes from their earliest incarnation. It is an impressive novel. Extraordinary.

With thanks to #NetGalley and #PenguinUK for allowing me to read and review

A really perfect novel - not what I was expecting at all. Impeccable writing style with an intriguing story that kept me reading and wanting to know more - I still want to know more about this family. Loved it.

Confessions is a stunning, immersive tale of two Irish sisters, spanning three generations and two continents. It opens in New York City, 2001, and covers Cora's experience of the tragic aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Alone, Cora travels to County Donegal, her parents’ homeland and the antithesis of everything she knows in NYC.

Confessions flits across generations, between the perspectives of young Cora, her aunt Roisin, mother, Maire, and Cora’s own daughter in 2017. It’s an exquisite tale of what-ifs and explores how history is doomed to repeat itself. Although not overtly, reproductive rights are at the core of Confessions, expected considering the backdrop of the ‘70’s, and poignant considering the current political state of the US.

The various mother daughter dynamics were sometimes strained, but always touching. Each of the women were fully fleshed and had distinct personalities, adding to a rich and fulfilling read. I enjoyed how the storylines were framed by the concept of a choose-your-own-adventure video game, tying elements of the women’s lives together, but emphasising that real life is not so black and white: in real life, there is no turning back.

This is a book that is guaranteed to stay with you. A truly gut wrenching read, but worth it.

Hoooookkkked
And then I wasn’t.

I wanted this to be a 5 star and it nearly was but, either I got jumbled up along the way or the book did. I will blame the book.
The story is introduced through a young woman left alone and orphaned after 9/11. The story aka baton is then handed to her mother and we go back in time to a young woman growing up in Ireland. One of two sisters and oh my, she packs a punch with her story. The next sister continues and again; what a story she has to tell.
It was giving me Long Island, The Coast Road vibes and it is a fantastic book. But, I wish the middle and end had clearer character definitions or at least a family tree. I felt very invested in some of the characters and then there were so many all of a sudden that I was left a bit confused but don’t let me put you off. It is a very good book and I am easily confused!

Confessions is a very accomplished debut from Catherine Airey. It is a family saga that originates with two sisters: Róisín and Máire. Both are creative but whilst Róisín seeks connections with those she loves at home, Máire needs space to thrive. She leaves Burtonport, Ireland for New York and the people she meets have long term consequences on her life and those of Cora, her daughter, and Lyca, her granddaughter. We are introduced to these women in different timeframes and the story is told from all their points of view at different stages. It becomes clear that the secrets they keep all impact them in different ways. For me, some plot points were tied up too neatly whilst others were brushed over too lightly but it was still a compulsive read.

Confessions is an impressive debut! Catherine Airey tells the story of two sisters navigating life between Ireland and NYC, weaving in themes of personal choice and redemption. I loved the beginning and the end, though I struggled a bit with the middle—the connections between characters were hard to follow at times but came together nicely in the end. Some heavy topics like 9/11, abortion, and addiction could have been explored more deeply, and I’m not sure the video game element added much to the story. That said, the underlying message about the power of our choices really resonated with me. Four stars, and I’m excited to see what Airey writes next!

Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for my ARC.

Confessions is an absolutely gorgeous debut novel, one which I can't quite believe is a debut. This book hooked me from the first page and I hated every time I had to put it down and go back into reality, I would just keep thinking about it and longing for the next time that I could pick it up. The characters are so vivid and beautifully developed, each one jumps off the page and pulls you into their world with such ease. It's a tense, haunting, emotional, action-packed story which really makes you feel the characters pain and will have you in shock, disbelief, and tears of frustration and hurt. I can see why this is Viking's lead novel for 2025 - the world is going to love this book.

oof, this is a tough one to review. while i really liked the beginning and the ending, i definitely struggled with the middle section; airey’s prose is beautiful, but i think some of the narrative choices were a tad bit questionable. it just felt excessively overt-the-top at times; without entering spoiler territory, i do think the sa could have been handled more carefully and explored in a far more insightful way, as it felt somewhat gratuitous.

as for the characters, i somewhat liked cora, but definitely struggled a lot with máire, who i think could have been a little more developed as a character. i liked michael and i found the exploration of the discrimination he faced as a black irish man quite interesting; róisín was also a very sweet character, and i also ended up liking lyca. overall, i do think there is a lot of merit in crafting such an expansive story of grief, generational trauma, and complex relationships between women; however, i wish it had been done in a more nuanced way, or at least avoiding the more melodramatic parts of the story.

Confessions is set across several decades of recent history, in sections split between New York City and rural Donegal, Ireland. It is told from multiple perspectives, of women in different generations of the same family. It opens memorably on September 11, 2001, with Cora Brady wandering the streets of New York following the attacks, in which it rapidly becomes apparent that her father has died. In an absence of any other surviving family members, we learn that she is to move to Donegal to stay with her aunt Róisín. And that’s the last we hear from Cora for a while, as we first jump back and later forward in time to learn about the stories of her mother, aunt, and later her daughter.

The next section is one of the book’s strongest, focusing on Cora’s mother Máire, who moves to New York in the 1980s, to study. A promising artist, she is disillusioned when her course turns out to be purely History of Art, and following a harrowing incident with the father of a friend, is taken under the wing of a somewhat shady professor who helps her move to an art college. At the same time, though, she is spiralling into a cycle of depression and drugs and isolating herself from old friends and family. Back in Ireland, her sister Róisín is very much the ‘left behind’ family member. She obsesses over Michael, an old family friend whose interest was really in Máire, and with a local building inhabited by an art group known as The Screamers. She’s a character with less direction, although that seems set to change when she forms a friendship and later a relationship with a quirky woman called Scarlett, whose ‘Victorian school’ business is a front for something very much illegal in the Ireland of the time. The book’s later sections are mainly told from the present-day perspective of Cora’s daughter Lyca, who is slowly uncovering the many secrets of the previous generations of her family. A trip to New York with her mother concludes the book, and wraps up some earlier threads.

I enjoyed this rather a lot as a series of really well-executed character studies. The section focusing on Máire is really immersive and powerful, and all the more so when we later learn her eventual fate. The relationships between the characters are also really compelling - aside from the central dynamic between the two sisters (which is largely a dynamic of silence, so interesting in how that plays out) there are little sub-stories that add sparks of interest throughout the book - notably Róisín / Scarlett and the childhood friendship / infatuation dynamic of Lyca and Sanjeet. It’s also a book with a really great sense of place - particularly in the New York sections, where the city very much feels like an additional character.

The same could also be said of the house that is the temporary home of the ‘Screamers’ and later becomes the family home of Lyca, Cora, and ‘Gaga’. It’s certainly an ominous and intriguing presence throughout the book, and its presence adds a note of pleasing strangeness to what might otherwise have been more ‘ordinary’ sections set in Ireland. I did feel, though, that the whole subplot around the Screamers, and the ‘Scream School’ text-based early video game written by one of the characters (it turns out), extracts from which punctuate the novel, felt a little too try-hard in terms of adding some sort of deeper connecting significance between the sections that didn’t quite hang together for me. I found myself seeing these bits as barriers in the way of the far more compelling character-led storytelling that makes up the bulk of the book.

There’s really a huge amount of quality in this, for a debut novel especially. It’s achingly close to being something I would unequivocally love and shout loudly about to anyone listening, but a couple of flaws I think expose it as a debut and not quite the full finished article. In addition to the above, it’s really the book’s conclusion that let it down for me. It’s too contrived, too unlikely a coincidence, and too neatly rounded off (where if left as only a hint it might have just about worked). For me this book has an essential beautiful messiness at it’s heart, and it’s the attempts to tidy up around the edges and give it structure and coherence that don’t quite work. Some things are better left messy.

A really intriguing and in places stunning debut, which deserves (and I think will get) a wide audience. It’s not without its flaws but it’s absolutely worth checking out. (8/10)