Having read and enjoyed both The Miniaturist and The Muse by Jessie Burton, I was expecting another unusual book to surprise and entertain. I was not disappointed, although I did find the opening rather a slow burn. However I feel persistence was rewarded by a beautifully written, intriguing detective story with a twist - no detectives, no actual crime, although the effects of the central deception were arguably as devastating on the life of the main character, Rose. Throughout the book she searches for information about her mother and an understanding of why she was abandoned as a young child. This is not a mawkish tale and in fact demonstrates a sense of empowerment, as Rose determines to discover the past in whatever ways necessary, discovering more about herself in the process. That said, I found the novel fascinating and moving, particularly at the end, and well worth the journey.

I loved this story. It was captivating, deeply moving and a page turner. I really felt for Rose as she tried to find out what happened to her mother. I loved seeing the relationship between Rose and Connie grow. This was a deeply moving story. I would highly recommend it.

Beautifully moving and entertaining story of three women and how their choices have consequences for themselves and others. In 1980 a young Elise Morceau is on her way to meet a man for a date ,instead she comes across Constance Holden, an older alluring woman. Elise is a drifter not yet sure of her path in life ,Constance an award winning author whose latest novel is about to be made into a Hollywood film . Following Constance to LA Elise is like a fish out of water unsophisticated ,bored ,, overhearing a conversation one evening she makes an impulsive decision that will change her life forever.
Thirty years later Rose Simmons is looking for the reason her mother left her as a baby .Having learned that Constance was the last person to see her mother she turns up at the door of ,the now reclusive, novelist seeking a confession. The story travels back and forth from present day to thirty years ago as the women try to make sense of their place in the world and their relationships . I was moved to tears at times and am still haunted by the women . Having previously only read the Minituarist I am now going to start on the Muse as I’ve remembered how much I love Jessie’s style of storytellng

Although I loved her previous novels I struggled with The Confession. The characters did not appeal to me and I found the meandering of the story boring.

I think this is a case of it’s not you, it’s me.

This is a book of many onion-like layers - you peel off one story and the one below springs into being. I found the book and characters slow to get into but after the first few chapters I was intrigued and wanted to find out how everything would end. Jessie Burton writes very cleverly and I enjoyed this book.

First of all, a confession from me: I have listened to The Miniaturist on Book at Bedtime and watched the television adaptation, but I haven’t read it or The Muse (but it’s high on my enormous to-read list). So, I’d say I’m a fan of Jessie Burton without having read one of her books. When the opportunity to read this popped up, I jumped at it. It’s an understatement to say it didn’t disappoint. It’s beautifully written and well characterised as well as being an out-and-out page-turner. I read the second half of the 400+ pages pretty much in one go – I had to know how things were going to pan out for Elise and Rose and Connie. The people and places ring true, and the characters’ relationships with friends and family are knotty and realistic. The ending is neatly, but not too neatly, wrapped – I felt satisfied without being spoon-fed. Now I really must get on and read the back catalogue.

I loved this book: it was beautifully written, engaging and compelling, and I fell in love with the complicated, intelligently-drawn characters. I found myself longing to read the book when I was doing other things, and I'm thinking about it days after finishing.

You will love or hate this book! I so wanted to love it but, in truth it lacked lustre. I couldn’t feel any empathy with the characters they lacked substance. It provided no insights and the book ended with me thinking ‘is that it’? I think it is beautifully written but I somehow feel cheated. Did I miss something?

Yet again another great story by Jessie Burton. So many twists and turns, so many emotions all wrapped up in a unique premise. A great read from a great writer. 5 super stars.

Rosie tracks down the only known partner of her mother – Constance. She hopes Constance can throw light on why her mother abandoned her and hopes to find the truth about her mother’s disappearance.
A well written novel of a woman’s search for her mother. So why does it all seem a bit too unreal.
.

I’ve always meant to try The Miniaturist so when I saw this novel on Netgalley I jumped at the chance.
The prose is beautiful, switching effortlessly between a past and present timeline, with mini sections of a novel embedded in a different style. The pace is slow, glacier slow, and any moments are about the characters.
Which normally would be fine, except I wasn’t massively drawn to anyone. Elise is exceptionally beautiful but filled with ennui, Connie is driven, arrogant and a touch cruel, and Rose is mostly aimless and yet selfish when she grasps for agency.
I have nothing against unresolved endings, but the trajectory of the story was pretty clear early on and it never deviated which was unsatisfying.

"You have to be practical around something that's impulsive, sometimes elusive. If you turn your soul into a business, you have to be ready for that to hurt sometimes

Jessie Burton's latest offering is an intimate, intelligent exploration of the complexity of women's lives and the depth nature of relationships in a narrative that goes back and forth in time as the lives of the three central protagonists are laid bare. In the 1980s, a young, beautiful and naive Elise Morceau meets the much older Constance Holden on Hampstead Heath. She falls for the confident and charismatic Constance, a writer whose novel is being turned into a big Hollywood movie, and follows her to Los Angeles. Whilst Constance feels comfortable and at home in the city of illusions, ambitions, glamour and lies, Elise finds herself out of her depth and finds it more problematic. Their relationship becomes increasingly fraught with conflict as it slowly begins to disintegrate. Decades later in 2017, Rose Simmons is in her mid 30s, plagued by doubts and wondering about where her life is at with her long term boyfriend, Joe, and his failing business, although her best friend, Kelly is an invaluable support and anchor.

Rose has always felt a void in her life, her mother abandoned her as a baby, and she feels a abiding need to know more about her, convinced it will make her feel more whole as a human being and contribute to a greater sense of her identity. She finds out from her father that Elise had links with Constance, a woman who had withdrawn from public life at the height of her fame and lived a reclusive existence since then. Rose embarks on a quest to discover more about her elusive mother as she inveigles her way into Constance's life under false pretenses, securing a position as her carer. She goes on to develop a lively and critically important relationship with Constance that is to form the basis of her life changing decisions as she learns to become more of who she is. There are echoes of the past in the present as the ghost of Elise hangs over and haunts Constance and Rose.

This is a beautifully written novel from Burton, the characterisations are wonderfully vibrant in a immersive narrative and there is a great sense of the differing locations of LA and London. The women that inhabit the novel, their lives and relationships are depicted with great skill and expertise, outlining the challenges they face in a manner that feels authentic. This is a fabulously compelling read about love, loss, friendship, being a mother, secrets and a search for identity that had me completely engaged and absorbed. What struck me most about it was that what it had to say about women had a universality about it that I think will make many readers love it. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for an ARC.

I hadn't read anything by this author before but had heard such good things about The Miniaturist I thought I would give it a go. Sadly I found it a real struggle but I continued to read hoping it would improve.

The storyline had real potential. Though, in my opinion, it lacked any continuity; and yes, I realise it is two people's stories at different times. However, I really didn't like or empathise with the characters at all. In fact, they annoyed me quite a lot of the time.

I hoped that as it reached its finale all this would be drawn together into some sort of conclusion and in a way I suppose it did. For me, though it lacked finality and closure. I feel this is the sort of book that some people will rave over and others will feel disappointed. Sadly I fit into the latter category.

The Confession is my first Jessie Burton book, and I have a feeling I may go searching for her previous two now...

The Confession is a story of self-discovery, told in two time trails.

We meet Rose in the present; a woman who is trying to find her mother or any information about her. A mother who disappeared when she was a baby, Rose is stuck in a life rut. In a relationship that is just floating along the surface of the sea of life, in a boring job, with nothing to look forward to.

Then we travel to 1982 where we are introduced to Elise, an impressionable young woman, whose dreary life gets a wash of colour after meeting an up and coming author, Constance Holden.

Connie Holden is a common thread for both the women, and the stories that progress in both time frames, able to provide excitement for Elise, and answers for Rose.

What a fantastically told story! I found myself willing Rose to be brave, to ask all the questions she needed to ask. I wanted Elise to be strong, and not crumble under the pressures life put her under. And Constance, or Connie? I wanted her to soften...

Did she? Did any of them achieve what I hoped? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out!

Many thanks to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan and Picador for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"You raise a child, I thought, to teach it how to leave you. And then I thought: But my mother got there first."

Rose is in her mid-thirties; working in a cafe; persisting with a nine year relationship which has run out of steam. Rose is lost. Then a visit to France to see her father, leads to a conversation which offers her a handful of breadcrumbs about her mother's disappearance when Rose was only a baby. And so she sets off in search of the reclusive one-time successful author Constance Holden, her mother and the truth...and herself.

At times, Rose's quest for self-identity, parallels that of her mother (Elise Morceau) who -as a young woman- also struggled to carve a deliberate path. At one point, Burton describes Elise waiting for the life-drawing students to leave when she had finished modelling so she could examine their portraits;
"in the hunt for herself, although she was the one who had provided the map. She would wander the paper forest of her own limbs, her face, her sex, her kneecaps, waiting for the moment of finding the person who had truly captured her."
And like her mother Rose relies on another to be complete; "I loved her as an idea, and when she came into my life, she made me more myself."

Burton writes with such skill, that I had to remind myself that the passages shared from Connie's books were also written by her and not by the fictional character whose voice is so unique and different to the tone of the rest of the book;
"They didn't know she'd been swimming all this decade, nor half of the things she could do. They thought she could fly, become a goat, a hare, a virgin of perilous beauty. But they did not think much about her arms and her actual legs, her lungs and her boredom."
The narrative itself is breathtakingly accurate at times, capturing moments in a way that left me wondering why I had never previously described them that way myself-for example when trying to guess another character's motives; I rejected the idea that I was dipping into Connie's box of letters and spelling any word I pleased, but maybe it was true."

For me, the weak moments come when Burton shares profundities such as; "You have to be practical around something that's impulsive, sometimes elusive. If you turn your soul into a business, you have to be ready for that to hurt sometimes." Statements like this feel too preachy and self-conscious and float conspicuously on the surface of the otherwise beautifully flowing text.

However overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Jessie Burton's latest offering-even more so than her previous two novels- and I would highly recommend it. Moreover, I am grateful to netgalley and the publisher for sharing an advance copy with me in return for my honest opinion.

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for gifting me a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I was so happy to receive this book, I am a fan of Jessie Burton and have loved her previous two novels, The Muse and The Miniaturist, so I had high hopes for this one, I'm glad I was not let down by this book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish, it didn't take me long as I was just hooked. I love the main characters, Rose, Connie and Elise and how well written they are, each character was not perfect they had their flaws but I loved reading about them and I became invested in them. They were so unique and that to me is an example of great writing.
Throughout the book, it is split into two different timelines, I think because I'm used to Burton's writing, this constant changing did not faze or take me out of the storyline or leave me confused. I simply cannot praise this book enough, it is clear that the author really researches before writing very thoroughly, I really enjoyed this and I look forward to more from Jessie Burton in future, if she narrates this audiobook, I will buy it.

I loved every part of this story and would read this book again. Will be recommending. Definitely be reading more from this author.

Difficult to decide between 3 and 4 stars for me , this one. Jessie Burton does, no doubt, write beautifully. There are a few sentences that i ŕead, and reread again as they were so true and insightful. But I did not enjoy the story as much as her previous two novels, and for me The Miniaturist remains her most effective work. I felt that this novel was at times, a theme in search of a story. Burton writes about female identity, ambition and female relationships, similar to The Muse , exploring the themes through the female characters. So the character of Elise is fuzzy and faint on the page- deliberately so - whereas Constance is much more sharply defined by her actions and speech. Rose moves through the novel from being similar to Elise to being more like Constance, under her influence. But the characters and their arc always feel a little unreal, improbable. The secondary characters are also problematic, particularly best friend Instagram influencer Kelly, who seems to exist only to throw another angle on female identity choices. It's also something of a slow burner although the pace does pick up in the second half of the novel. Recommended overall as well worth a read, but not entirely successful for me.

Big fan of The Miniaturist here so I did a wee jig when I saw this become available on Netgalley so thank you for the opportunity.

This book is very different although similarly frustrating at the end as I’m a luddite who needs all the answers spelled out to them but if you accept that that’s what you get with this author then you will enjoy this book!

It’s well written and the characters are brilliant.

Loved this book, but I am a fan of jessie's work having devoured her previous titles. This book is beautifully written, and lovingly constructed. Reading it is as someone who lost their mother very young I found this book very moving and gripping. Thankyou so much for this opportunity to read an advance copy.