Speak Now or Forever Hold your Peace: The Confession by Jo Spain @SpainJoanne @QuercusBooks #BlogTour

I’ll admit it right away, I am very grateful to the lovely Anne Cater and the team behind The Confession for including me in this blog tour!

Title: The Confession
Author: Jo Spain
Publisher: Quercus Books
Date of publication: 25 January 2018
Format: e-ARC
Source: Publisher
Number of pages: 400
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear.
Just an hour later the attacker, JP Carney, has handed himself in to the police.
He confesses to beating Harry to death, but JP claims that the assault was not premeditated and that he didn’t know the identity of his victim. With a man as notorious as Harry McNamara, the detectives cannot help wondering, was this really a random act of violence or is it linked to one of Harry’s many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal?
This gripping psychological thriller will have you questioning, who
– of Harry, Julie and JP – is really the guilty one? And is Carney’s
surrender driven by a guilty conscience or is his confession a calculated move in a deadly game?

I’ll confess.

Entering blind into The Confession was the best idea ever. The opening glued my eyes open and made me forget my surrounding. Thankfully, I was home and did not have to carry any duties. I would not have moved anyway. I just HAD to know more about the characters, the events, I wanted everything, yet I was dreading the end. Would I be disappointed? Would the tension just go all flabby and leave me unsatisfied?

Each part brought a new light to a scenario I thought I was figuring out as I turned the pages, only to realize at the end that there were crazier minds than mine!!! Jo Spain is chillingly brilliant at weaving, intertwining, and molding lives together in a way that doesn’t make sense until all parts are revealed and your jaw drops as though David Tennant just appeared in front of you! 

The title is misleading. This book is not about a single confession, but a some of confessions, big and small, obvious or not. Lies, doubts, hidden motives, The Confession sends you in so many different directions! I got lost, in a good way! I love it when a story gives me clues and hints and I just follow them like my dog follows a trail of biscuits.

But here is the thing about fairytales. Sometimes they’re darker than you can ever imagine.

Each character has different sides and they come to light as you get to know them better. I loved the fact I cannot say I truly loved or hated anyone. Everyone is multi-dimensional, giving way to a thousand possibilities, adding a curious but welcome curiosity and tension with every part!

You know who did what, and yet, you don’t know a thing! The author brilliantly sets the tone, gives you a scene, a victim, a criminal, a confession, and puts them in a box, shakes it, and you are left with pieces that don’t fit.

Knowing you have to live with grief, that there is nothing you can do to change what has happened, is just unbelievable.

There is a constant coming back and forth between each narrator and my guess is you won’t find out who did what until the end! I know I did not! The idea of guilt, its power, its weight, everything is scrutinized and the details choke the protagonists as much as it does the reader. I am guilty, I loved it!

You don’t have to be a psychopath to have a psychotic episode.

The Confession fed my interest in understanding human behavior through a stunning plot and a brilliant writing that don’t let the reader down. I strongly recommend it to anyone willing to bite their nails and question their husband!!!

The book will become available in hardback on January 25th!

Don’t forget to check the great stops on the tour!

Jo Spain’s first novel, With Our Blessing, was one of seven books shortlisted in the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition and went on to be a top-ten bestseller in Ireland. She has written two further in the series, featuring DI Tom Reynolds. Jo has has worked as a party advisor on the economy in the Irish parliament and is now writing full-time. She lives in Dublin with her husband and their four young children.

Twitter: @SpainJoanne