She Treads Softly: The Confessions

Monday, July 7, 2025

The Confessions

The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr
7/22/25; 336 pages
Atria Books

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 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.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.