The story two sisters, and the family and relationships that grow around and in between each; it pulls in 9/11, abortions, adoptions, relationships and more, in a beautiful and compelling writing style that kept me hooked til the end.

A brilliant family saga, I really enjoyed this book. I connected with the characters and was totally invested in what happened to them. Very well written, I found it hard to put down. Definitely recommend this book. Thank you #netgalley

Irish writers are thriving and the reason is that they are so blinkin good. Confession’s is Airey’s debut and another novel on my 2025 list.
It starts on 9/11 with a teenage Cora as the twin towers collapse and the realisation that her father will never return home. What now for this lost, trauma filled teen? A message from an unknow Aunt Roisin in Ireland sees Cora return to her dead mother home, and the unravelling of her mother, Marie’s history.
It’s the story of an artist that struggled with her mental health, that left for New York to study art only to find that it wasn’t the course she wanted it to be. What she did find was misplaced love with her college lecturer, a baby and a spiral into the New York’s underground world of drugs and addiction.
At home in Ireland Roisin remained the dutiful daughter, caring for their mother friends and later lovers with Michael from next door. Micheal, the only thing the two sisters had in common, Michael devastated by Marie’s disappearance, Roisin second best, convenient.
When Michael leaves to chase Marie in New York, Roisin is left alone until she meets Scarlett in the scream house, their lives cemented together over a shared secret.
The novel jumps back to Cora and 2018, and her own daughter, Lyca. Cora’s a mother but perhaps not the best mother, her true passion, overturning the Irish laws on abortion. It isn’t until Lyca discovers letters that maybe she begins to finally understand her mother and herself. There’s that awful decision of what to tell her mother, Airey waits us wait until she takes them back to New York, to meetings with people that have a significance they never dreamt off
Confessions was a wonderful mix of love, grief, passion, the ravages of mental health but also one full of hope.

Screaming.
What tentative threads throughout the novel. I had to remind myself who was who and got the family line sorted, the only one I was not absolutely sure about was Lyca's Father.
Depiction of hardship in Ireland and sibling rivalry between Roisin And Maire, excellent. Michael is taken on as a farm hand by the girls Father and stays with them after their Father dies.
In the village there is a large house which is inhabited by a sect of screaming women, the village residents are suspicious of the house and its occupants. Rosin and Michael trick Maire into getting a job there using her artistic talent. An opportunity to go to University in New York comes up for Maire and she takes it. After being raped by her room mates Father, Maire has help from one of the lecturers who realises she is pregnant, this ends in heartbreak for her.
Back in Ireland Roisin is in love with Michael, she now lives with Scarlet in the screamers house.
Michael and Maire have a daughter called Cora, Maire suffers from mental health issues and Michael gets killed in the 9/11 tragedy.
So much in this book, abuse, abortion, coercion, racial prejudice, homophobia all skilfully and sympathetically described.
Thank you Catherine, NetGalley and Viking for this ARC.

Confessions by Catherine Airey is a fascinating, emotional family saga debut.

The novel starts in 2001, New York, right after 9/11. The atmosphere is sinister, as can be expected after the chaos the city was in during and after the attacks. Character Cora takes the reader with her in her quest to find herself and her family, going back to Ireland.
The novel then highlights the perspectives of Cora's family members, past and present, in Ireland and New York, and tells the reader which secrets have been buried long ago.

What kept me reading were intricate details connecting the different storylines and perspectives, the way that everything adds up beautifully in the end. The story is raw, emotional, and a joy to read. The ending is somewhat open, although the reader may be able to imagine how the characters' lives will unfold in the future. Seeing this book in its published form in bookstores makes me want to cling to other bookshoppers and tell them "please buy this book, you will not regret it."

Thank you Netgalley and Penguin General UK for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

What an emotional rollercoaster. This sits in two world of a quiet tale of place and identity, and a cross-generational epic. Not an easy read but a worthwhile one. Confessions starts with Cora whose father has died in the towers on 9/11. She receives a letter from her aunt in Ireland, inviting her to come and stay with her.

From there, we zoom out across the lives of Cora's family. How she came to be and the difficult life her mother had in New York. Her mother and aunt's upbringing in Ireland and the need to escape vs the pull to stay. And eventually to the story of Cora's own daughter and the differences in modern Ireland.

In some ways this is a conventional story dealing with relationships, heartbreak, young pregnancy, sibling rivalry, mental illness and more. It definitely strays into melodrama at times and tackles perhaps more than it's able for. But there's a real heart at the centre of it. I felt deeply for these characters and for the sense of place.

Confessions has lots that I love in a book; a sprawling timeline (1970s to the present), set in Ireland and New York (LOVE a book set in NY), two sisters and family secrets. It examines some big and oftentimes difficult themes, including 9/11, racism, sexual violence and serious mental illnes which for the most part were well explored, but at times it felt a little melodramatic.

On occasion it felt like everything but the kitchen sink had been thrown at the book with the multiple traumas, multiple character viewpoints, chapter styles and game, and ended up feeling a little congested .

Saying that, it's an impressive debut and Airey creates a wonderful sense of time and place and great characterisation.

Confessions opens with a moment of raw emotion on the fateful morning of September 11, 2001, in New York City. 16-year-old Cora Brady skips school, anxiously awaiting her unreliable drug dealer boyfriend. As she drops an acid tab, she turns on the TV news, plunging into a world that will shatter her life forever.

Now orphaned and utterly untethered, Cora finds herself wandering the streets, which are now papered over with photos of the missing. When a letter from her aunt, Róisín Dooley, arrives, offering a place to stay in her parents’ native home, Cora leaps into the unknown.

The story then shifts to a quiet village in Burtonport, Co Donegal, in 1974, where Róisín and her sister Máire grow up on a farm. With Róisín's passion for reading and writing and Máire’s artistic talent, the sisters invent stories about a mysterious old schoolhouse on the village’s edge. This house will become a sanctuary for women practising scream therapy—the Atlantis Primal Therapy Commune but referred to as the "Screamers" by the locals. When Máire is invited to join them, her life is about to take a thrilling, unanticipated turn.

Fast forward to New York City, where Máire is studying art at NYU. Behind her brave facade, she grapples with profound loneliness, wandering for hours in the rain, her days lost in the quiet hum of diners. A fraying isolation takes hold, and her worldview becomes tainted through its lens.

While Confessions centres on the lives of three generations of women in one family, spanning decades and various historical events, there's a strong focus on societal expectations and oppressions that prevent women from fulfilling their potential. The themes are heavy, but Airey manages them with a deft touch.

The perspectives of these women evoke a deep tenderness as Airey traverses countries and generations, confronting their vulnerability while trying to navigate their lives, which are full of twists and turns. This makes for seriously addictive reading—no mean feat for a book nearly 500 pages long.
 
Confessions is an astonishing read that deserves all the love that's bound to come its way.

Many thanks to the publisher for kindly sending me a review copy. As always, this is an honest review.

This multigenerational story about secrets and belonging is a compelling and intricate debut that kept me engaged as a reader, even when I wanted more on the page. Confessions has been compared to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, given its intricacy. The video game element reminded me of Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. While the expansive timeline made me think of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Confessions sits at the intersection of commercial and literary fiction, giving it a broad appeal to readers who enjoy the interiority of character studies and propulsive storytelling. Catherine Airey is undoubtedly a writer to watch, yet there are times when Confessions contains one too many coincidences for this reader to be able to suspend her disbelief entirely.

3,5

An engaging and fluently written debut following three generations of Irish women, jumping between New York City and rural County Donegal in Ireland. It's full of young mothers and absent fathers. If there is an overarching theme it's probably abortion, but the plot is central as family secrets are gradually revealed.

I enjoyed it, it felt fresh even if not particularly innovative. I wanted to know how it all fit together. I suspect Booker judges may find it slightly too light for the longlist though.

My confession; I couldn’t connect with this novel.

Cory Brady’s father was killed when the Twin Towers fell. A traumatic experience that leaves her an orphan. However, a letter from an aunt, residing in Ireland arrives and changes Cory’s life.

I feel like a traitor when I see how many readers are raving about this book and the author. It didn’t have the same impact on me. I found it quite repetitive. It possibly brought out my cynicism about life, which is shocking. When did I turn into such a terrible person?

Rony

Elite Reviewing Group received a copy from NetGalley to review.

Stories and secrets.

Catherine Airey’s debut novel, Confessions is a propulsive read. Compulsively, I picked it up at every opportunity, eager to discover more about the sibling relationships and family dynamics in this pacy tale spanning three generations and five decades.

With its dual settings of New York and rural Ireland and a plot crafted around women seeking to find themselves and their fulfilment, I sensed echoes of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, although Confessions is by far the edgier of the two.

The story begins poignantly on the day of the Twin Towers terrorist attack. We meet Cora, then just sixteen, who having already lost her mother, becomes an orphan that day. What follows via an elaborate switching timeline are the stories of Cora, her mother, Máire and her daughter, Lyca, with Cora’s Aunt Róisín’s presence woven inextricably throughout.

Airey inserts a video game motif into the narrative in which two sisters must work out why students at a boarding school are disappearing, and how to prevent it, an allegory to the main storyline. And this is not the only recurring theme in this convincingly atmospheric book which does not shy away from the traumas of manipulation, rape and suicide and their consequences through the generations, or from grappling with issues such as abortion, addiction, mental illness and the heartache of being diminished as an outsider.

The haunting nature of the storytelling is amplified by much of it being fashioned around an old house in Burtonport that has seen more than one mysterious occupant over the decades, and which has a dusty and disquieting attic that hides incendiary memories. Some of the story being told through the contents of letters written by Cora’s father on the 104th floor of the North Tower pre 9/11 adds to the spectral quality of the book.

Confessions is a story born of secrets, but I think it is destined to be a very public success.

I didn't expect it to be so devastating and heavy, and yet it was captivating. The structure and writing was planned thoroughly and heart was poured into the work. Airey really brought readers into her shoes, but it can be hard to read if you are not in the mood for something heavy. Amazing work!

Thank you Netgalley for the arc!

DNF got sucked into this when I was tired as it mentioned set in NYC. But then moves to Ireland and got boring . Good book but not for me.

This is a sweeping and expansive multi-layered debut novel. The story is gripping, with parts of it being very difficult to read. Airey writes in a way that forces the reader to develop real empathy for the characters.

Overall, a very accomplished debut.

*Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A great debut, it was a thoroughly interesting story and it had me hooked. Loved it.

Thank you to the author, publisher and netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I commend the author for being so ambitious in their debut and telling a multigenerational tale. However, I believe it suffers because of it. Some of the characters don't have enough space to develop and it often feels like the reader is only catching up on them to experience a traumatic event and then it moves to the next plot point in another time altogether. The story feels like a puzzle we are trying to put together and while the process can be entertaining and grips the reader's attention more times than not, I felt like the final picture wasn't worth all the back and forth.
The main theme I could gather was the importance of bodily autonomy and the right of abortion. While there are intense and emotional moments, there isn't an opportunity to actually experience how the lack of choice impacted the women on this novel. All the children grow up during the gaps of the story and we are only told of what would be more interesting to me to be shown.
I am still curious to read what Catherine Airey will write next and hopeful that I will enjoy more what comes next.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was a cracking read and the characters really got to me. We follow three generations of one Irish family, not always in chronological order. We meet Maire and her sister Roisin growing up in rural Ireland, their lives intertwined with neighbour Michael and forever shaped by the untimely death of their father. We follow Maire as a teenager navigating life as an art student in New York. Her daughter Cora whose story begins the book is waiting for her father coming home from work in the Twin Towers on 9/11. And Cora's daughter Lyca, who pulls the threads together. Powerful, fascinating, dark, complex characters, this was a treasure trove. #netgalley #confessions

If you love sweeping, multi-generational sagas haunted by secrets, you will eat Catherine Airey's debut novel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Though this isn't my preferred genre, I found myself unable to put Confessions down despite some issues with it. I love stories about New York, am fascinated by 9/11 and its impact on the city, and of course I love stories about Ireland - so lots to love here for me.

The plot follows four generations of women from the same family. In the 1980s, Máire and Róisín are stifled by their rural Donegal upbringing; in 2001, Cora reels from the death of her father in 9/11, and in 2018, Lyca grapples with the inheriated tragedies of her family. There's an awful lot going on in this one; it is complex enough to earn its near-500 page length. Airey's writing is vivid and assured, and the main characters are well-drawn and fascinating in all of their messiness. The pacing is brilliant for much of the book, even across different narrative styles, including second person narrative, a notioursly tricky one for readers (me) to engage with. It's a very creative novel, bursting with originality in style and form even if the plot is not quite the most original.


For the first 75% of the book, I couldn't get enough: I found Cora, Roisin and Maire's stories engrossing and shattering. However in the last quarter, the book faltered for me, failing to bring its many narrative threads together in a way that felt satisfying. It all started to feel a bit mechanical, for me. There's an over-reliance on a specific trope that left me scratching my head, and elements of the political dicussions in the novel faltered for me, too. I am being a bit obtuse to avoid spoilers, obviously. I also thought that Lyca's voice didn't feel distinct enough from the others. After the vivid technicolour of Cora, Roisin and Maire, Lyca felt a bit flat, which was a shame at the end of the novel.

Criticisms aside, this is a seriously good debut novel with beautifully drawn characters and a willingness to play with form that I found exhilirating, rather than preteentious. I will be keeping an eye on Airey in the future, as she could well be the next big thing in literary fiction.

Catherine Airey’s Confessions packs a lot in; there are themes of love, loss, and intergenerational identity. From New York to rural Ireland, the story explores the lives of three women across decades.

The multigenerational aspect of the novel is particularly engrossing. I enjoyed the background into both Cora's mum and aunt and what led to the decisions that were made (without going into too many details to spoil for others). By the end though, I felt that Cora became irrevalant to the story, which was a shame as I would have preferred to keep reading about her since she was the starting point.

Overall, this book kept me engaged, and I lost track of time reading it so that says it all!