NA Audiobook Review: Confess by Colleen Hoover

This was my next audiobook that I checked out from the library. Ever since I first listened to November 9, I have become a huge fan of Colleen Hoover.  And this book didn't disappoint. 

There are two main characters that the story is told by in alternating chapters.  First is Auburn, and when we first meet her she is young, and visiting her dying boyfriend in the hospital.  Then in Chapter 1, she is in a meeting with a lawyer, and trying to figure out how she can come up with the money to do what she wants.  We aren't told what she has asked him to do, and we don't find out for quite a while actually.  She has just moved to Texas.  On her way home from the lawyer's office, she notices a help wanted sign in the window of a building that is covered with people's confessions.  As she stands there reading some of them, and wondering what the job might possibly entail, the door opens, and we meet Owen.

Owen is an artist, and he uses the confessions that people leave at his studio to create paintings.  He is getting ready to have his monthly show that very evening, and he needs someone to help him work it.  You see, it had been his girlfriend, who just broke up with him. So he needs someone right away.  He convinces Auburn to stay and work, since he is paying $200 for one night's work, she can't very well say no to that.

But somehow it seems that Owen knows Auburn from before.  We know that it has something to do with when she was in Texas visiting her boyfriend.  But it takes a while before it comes out exactly where and how he knows her.  This first night, working the art show, something between them seems to click.  For both of them. And Owen walks Auburn home after taking her to the bar across the street for a late dinner after the show.  The scene at Auburn's apartment is really cute.  Especially the part where he doesn't seem to want to leave, even once the door is almost closed.  They set a date for the following evening.  But it turns out that something happens, and Owen never shows.  They didn't exchange phone numbers, so she has no way to even call him after she is stood up in the restaurant. 

It turns out that Owen was arrested for drugs.  Something that when Auburn finds out, about a month later, it really changes whether she can be around him.  It doesn't change the connection she feels, but it is a problem for what she is wanting to do with her life.  There is another guy in her life, Trey, and he is the brother of her boyfriend that passed away when she was younger.  He is a policeman, and he seems to be interested in Auburn.  She has never really felt that way about him.  I mean, he's the brother of who she loved!  But with all the issues that Owen has that could mess up Auburn's plans, she decides that she has to let Trey in, and give a relationship with him a try.  Not only does Auburn's roommate not like Trey, Owen warns her about Trey. 

Such an emotional story.  The reason why Owen had the drugs is not what it seems, it is not such a bad thing, and actually shows what a great caring guy he is.  The reason for Auburn going to a lawyer is so heartbreaking and you are just rooting for her so much!  And then, the end, what Trey does, it's just wow.  A very intense ending, but another happy one. 

Colleen Hoover is a great writer, and I look forward to reading more and more of her books.  And hopefully one day I can meet her.

The Thief of Auschwitz by Jon Clinch

I got this title from Netgalley, I believe right before they changed?  Or maybe right after they changed their site and I began having issues.  I can't find it on there anymore, so I have no idea how to share my review or who the publisher is that I would share it with.  I believe it comes out on January 15th, so at least I know I'm within the amount of time I'm supposed to review it in.
I've always been fascinated with the holocaust, probably since I read The Diary of Anne Frank.  And whenever I get a chance to read a new book about it, I usually take the opportunity.  This was pretty much a normal story.  We hear a bit about life before the camps, and then we end up with life in the camp.  Life is miserable as always.  They lose all their belongings, get their heads shaved, and the men are separated from the women, and the children are separated as well, basically sent to die as soon as they reach the concentration.  The story is about Max's family.  His father, mother, and sister.  His father used to be the best barber in the area where they lived.  His mother was a great artist.  But once they get to the camp, of course, all that is gone.  And his sister Lydia is gone as soon as they reach the camp.  Max lasts because his father sees that kids going to the one side, probably aren't making it.  So he tells Max to lie about his age, Max is tall, so he is able to pass.  Max and his father have no idea about Eidel or Lydia.  Eidel, his mother, assumes that Max was lost too.  And one day she chooses to send a message to Max's father, Jacob, to ask him how they will live without their kids.  It is at this point that she finds out Max lived.  Jacob learns of what could be called the cushier jobs, and begins to try to get the job of cutting the Nazi officer's hair, and getting the easier job.  Up until then he and Max have been digging a huge ditch that they're told is to connect to a new women's camp.  Hard labor.  Eidel has been working in the kitchen in the women's camp.  At one of the officer's houses, the painting of Lydia is hanging, and when Jacob sees it, he almost loses it.  Soon the officer talks about how he wishes he could find someone to paint a portrait of his family that is as great as this one.  When Max is in an accident and breaks his leg, Jacob sees a way to possibly save him from being taken to die now that he can no longer work.  He tells the officer that it was his wife who painted the portrait and asks for a chance to take care of his son.  The officer gives him the chance and brings Eidel to the house.  When Eidel sees the portrait, she faints, and tells them that it was her daughter.  Well of course the German family doesn't want a portrait of a Jew hanging in their house, so even though they get her to do the painting, they take the portrait down and send it back to the store where they found it.  Max is given time to heal and almost really special treatment because of his mother doing the portrait.  But it soon turns that Eidel is having problems painting the portrait, it's been so long, not to mention these are the enemies.  So while she paints a good portrait when she is there, at night she sketches what she really feels with them, creating monstrous evil people in her bunk.  One day it gets out that she has done this, all the way up to the officer, and he is so angry that he burns the bunkhouse down.  While he is having Eidel finish the portrait.  Jacob is now sure his family won't have long to live after she's done.  So, he encourages Max to escape.  And Max does leave, but not without stealing the painting from the store first.  He goes off and becomes a painter/artist in his own right.  And interjected within the story are the modern day chapters about him getting ready to have his own big retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington DC.
The story was what you'd expect.  Reading about the camp and horrors and way of life there was interesting as usual.  Interesting and horrifying.  But the way they did the Max "present day" chapters mixed in was confusing at times.  It took my mind a minute to readjust.  I think part could be due to reading it as an e-book, and that maybe in an actual physical book where you can see the actual pages separating them it wouldn't be so bad.  And there's this part where he talks about an Uncle's paintings in the present day, that kind of seemed a little unnecessary to the story, in my eyes anyway.  A quick read, and one that people who often read about the holocaust will probably want to read.  The title is a bit misleading, as I expected an actual story about a thief.  And really I think the only true theft was the painting being stolen at the very end, and this was after Max had left Auschwitz.

Gateway 8: North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

This was a really good book. The main character is Terra. Both she and her brothers are named after map related things because her father was a mapmaker. A humiliated mapmaker as he bought into a fake map supposedly from ancient China. Her brothers are both old enough that they are away at college or out on their own, and Terra is in high school. Her mom is overweight, and her dad is hateful and cruel to her and her mother. And Terra has one other strike against her, a huge port wine stain birthmark on her face. She's learned how to cover it with makeup as she's gotten older, in fact, she has a very hot boyfriend. Terra's outlet is art. She creates collages that represent people and things in her life. When a guest speaker at school gives Terra a suggestion of a new laser surgery that is supposed to fix this type of birthmark, Terra decides to try once more to get rid of this defect. On the way back home from the first treatment, it is a snowy, icy day, and they have an accident. The other car involved includes a Chinese boy named Jacob, and his adopted mom. Jacob looks like a goth, but Terra sees he has a cleft lip scar. This is why Jacob was probably given up in China as normally boys are not adopted.

Jacob and Terra connect, as do Jacob's mom and Terra's mom. After a bad holiday experience with her brothers, Terra's oldest brother invites her and her mom to visit him in China where he works. Jacob and his mom choose to go along, as they keep trying to visit the orphanage he came from, but keep hitting brick walls. The trip is a growing experience for all involved. And in a good way, they all come back changed. But Terra must decide if she wants to give up the "perfect" boyfriend that she doesn't "deserve" with her looks for someone like Jacob, who she has instantly connected with, as he just seems to "get" her.

Awesome, awesome story. I look forward to reading more by this author.