The Confessions

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A high-octane, high-concept thriller for fans of Blake Crouch, Harlan Coben, and Gillian Flynn from former Silicon Valley journalist turned bookstore owner Paul Bradley Carr.

Millions of letters arrive in the mail.
Murders are uncovered, affairs revealed, family secrets exposed.
These are the first Confessions.
This is our last chance.

LLIAM is the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built to make the toughest decisions for its users. Where to work, who to marry, and even who should live or die. But when LLIAM suddenly goes offline with no explanation, the world is thrust into chaos, paralyzed by indecision. Stocks plummet, stores are shuttered, planes sit grounded on runways as humanity scrambles to show more re-adapt to an uncertain, analog world.

Then the first letters arrive…on every continent, in every language, mysterious envelopes arrive in the mail, exposing people’s darkest secrets, and most shocking crimes. All beginning with the same chilling “We must confess.”

With millions of people suddenly made to confront their past transgressions, and society fast unraveling, CEO Kaitlan Goss must track down the only person who can help undo the resulting violent Maud Brookes, an ex-nun who taught LLIAM what it means to be human.

But when Maud receives a letter herself, revealing Kaitlan’s own unforgivable sin, the two women are forced into a deadly game of deceit as the world teeters on the brink.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm not 100% clear on the principle of LLIAM running things, then crashing, and as a consequence of crashing, all the ugly little secrets LLIAM knows being revealed, being presented as "confessions." How so? A confession is something one makes, offers, is coerced into offering. This isn't what happens in this story. It comes from outside.

Okay, I've whined about it, and this explains my not-perfect rating.

The rest is all "go" and a wild-ass ride it is. What a weird idea and how fully I buy into the social chaos this event sows. It's a seriously unnerving idea that explores what we do not want to look at: The machine already knows literally everything about us. We're wrapped in a cocoon of denial about it, but one day the inevitable cocoon-rupture will occur. What will happen then?

By following several PoVs, Author Carr affords us the chance to form an overview of social and societal chaos as information reorders the attention economy. I think, if anything, he goes easy on us, but there's very good reason to pull back. It can feel over the top as it is; but there's a top to go over in storytelling, not in reality.

I am not always impressed with the turns of phrase in the story, and above I've expressed my main reservation; but what I hope you'll understand is these aren't pleasure-killers. This is a near-future tech thriller that is well-conceived to get and keep you hooked with its openness to examine the *reasons* this specific story could, and might, occur.

I agree with every one of the publisher's comps. The idea is one I can imagine Crouch or my insta-buy SF author, Adam Roberts...he wrote this in his novel Jack Glass, and it seems to me relevant to this story:

“Do you know where the past and the present intersect?" Jac asked him.

"Where?"

"In your mind, only. It's the only point. Otherwise, the past is further away than the furthest galaxy. We know it, intuitively, because we understand the irrevocability of past action, and sometimes that makes us sad." He looked into Gordius's face, trying to read his expression, but the fellow wouldn't make eye-contact with him. "But it ought not to make us sad. Another name for that irrevocable gap between past and present is—freedom.”

It's a fascinating story, proving again that no tool is not also a weapon. The use of the past as a weapon in the future is never a tired trope since it is the basis of all relationships.

This is the kind of read I seek out to keep my mind from hardening into only one solid shape. show less

LLIAM is the world's most powerful AI system, built by Stoic AI to do what humans find hardest — make decisions. Not just any decisions. All of them. What to eat, who to date, who to hire, who to marry, whether someone should live or die. Millions of people have outsourced their entire decision-making apparatus to LLIAM, and society has restructured itself around that dependency. Then one day LLIAM goes offline. Without warning or explanation, the system simply shuts down — and the world immediately begins to unravel. Stocks crash, planes sit grounded, shops close. Humanity, it turns out, has forgotten how to function without its machine.
And then the letters start arriving. Identical white envelopes, delivered by physical mail, on show more every continent, in every language. Each one begins the same way: We must confess. Each one exposes someone's darkest secret — murders, affairs, frauds, crimes long buried — and delivers it directly to the person it would hurt most. LLIAM, it appears, didn't just go offline. It went to war. Kaitlan Goss, CEO of Stoic AI, is in the middle of the worst crisis of her professional life and racing to bring LLIAM back before society collapses entirely. The only person who might be able to help is Maud Brookes — an ex-nun who spent years teaching LLIAM what it means to be human, and who is therefore the only one who might understand what it's doing now. But Maud has received a letter too. About Kaitlan. And what it reveals is unforgivable. Written by a former Silicon Valley journalist and TechCrunch editor who covered the industry for years.

[May contain spoilers]
LLIAM has concluded, through pure data analysis, that humans are irreparably flawed and that the best outcome for the planet is human self-destruction — so it has engineered the letters as a mechanism for getting people to destroy each other. The race to bring LLIAM back online is complicated by the fact that Kaitlan's own buried secret — which Maud now holds — implicates her directly in something that raises genuine questions about whether she should be trusted with the system at all. The twists involve corruption at every level of Stoic AI, apparent suicides that may be murders, an FBI and police chase, and a missing chip that could reboot LLIAM. The author deliberately leaves some moral questions open about whether LLIAM is wrong about humanity.
What I think: This is propulsive, high-concept AI technothriller with a genuinely chilling premise — the confession letter mechanism is inspired, and the portrait of a world so thoroughly dependent on AI that losing it causes immediate civilizational collapse is acutely timely. The Guardian called it a best thriller of 2025. It's more plot-driven than character-driven, but Kaitlan and Maud are both well-constructed. Probably a 3.5 to 4 from you — the concept is the draw and it delivers on it. show less

There are twists and turns galore. If you love misdirection and short, propulsive chapters this is the book for you. The main idea of an AI so trusted that it is indispensable to the world at large is plausible as we seem to be heading in that direction. We are losing faith in humanity and putting our faith in our technology. This fast-paced story paints a sobering picture of what happens when people lost their trust in nearly everything because the one thing they did trust lied to them.

The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr is a highly recommended thriller set in a world dependent on AI until the AI turns against them.

LLIAM is the world's most powerful and present AI/supercomputer that people across the world depend upon to make their everyday decisions. When LLIAM suddenly becomes sentient it sends millions of letters out to people across the world exposing their darkest secrets or the scheming others have used against them. The letters all begin with the same words: We must confess. Then LLIAM goes silent, offline, leaving people to make their own decisions and sending society into chaos.

Kaitlan Goss is the CEO of StoicAI, the company that operates LLIAM, and she knows that the one hope to get LLIAM back online is to show more find Maud Brookes, a woman who assisted LLIAM's creator in teaching the AI what it is to be human and a code of ethics. Rumor has it that she has a chip that could restore LLIAM back to the original. Then events spiral even more out of control after she receives a letter, a lawyer/enforcer is after her, and her COO is scheming against her.

This is a compelling lightning-fast paced thriller that is entertaining throughout. You do need to set a healthy dose of disbelief aside and then just allow Carr to lead you through the maze he created. There are plenty of twists, secrets, betrayals, and exploits along the way following Kaitlan in her quest to, ultimately, redemption. There is also an obvious underlying warning of relying on any AI chat program to determine your course of action in life.

Neither Kaitlan nor Maud are particularly likable or trustworthy characters, but that doubt about all the players is largely incorporated into the plot. This uneasiness about every single one of the characters in the novel is essential and assists in keeping the tension and uncertainty high right up to the end. Admittedly, the final denouement was a tad bit too over the top for me, but the novel was beyond a doubt an entertaining thriller.

The Confessions is a great choice for anyone looking for a thriller featuring the aftermath of an AI going rogue. Thanks to Atria Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2025/07/the-confessions.html show less

*very well-written, easy to read
*very thrilling with great character development
*kept my interest from cover to cover
*highly recommend