From my blog: Always With a Book:

Last year, I read and really enjoyed The Girl Before by J.P. Delaney and knew that I would be reading everything and anything this author wrote. Well, here is the latest book and once again, I found myself completely engaged by this psychological thriller - a book with such a unique plot that I devoured it in just one day!

What's interesting to note about this book is that J.P. Delaney actually wrote a story about an actress given a role in an undercover operation years ago. It had a different title and was published under a different name, but it didn't do as well as he had hoped. After the success of The Girl Before, he decided to revisit this earlier book, but not just republish it as it was...he gave it a whole new life...and that is what we have here.

Let me just tell you...this author is quite a genius when it comes to spinning a tale. And this new title - the old title, by the way was The Decoy - is just brilliant, because at the end of the day, you will find yourself doing just the opposite and believing no one! I think that's the best part of this book - not knowing who you could trust or believe.

The characters in this book, while not necessarily likeable, are still compelling and hard to walk away from. They are complex, interesting and mysterious. You just need to know what it is that they are going to do next.

This is a dark, thrilling read, no doubt about that. The cat and mouse game that is going on will keep you reading until you reach the final conclusion. And the short chapters just add to the frantic page flipping...as do all the questions that keep popping up the further you get into the story. J.P. Delaney sure knows how to rope you in to keep you hooked, there is no doubt about that!

If you are looking for a good page-turning thriller with an unreliable narrator, a murder and deception, than look no further than here.

I was a bit disappointed by this book after reading The Girl Before.
The main character, Claire is a citizen of England in the US broke and looking for work. She ends up doing work for a divorce lawyer in which she tries to lure cheating husbands to pay her for sex. Once she gets the deal on video, she shares the evidence with the wife and gets paid. However, one evening, the wife of a man she propositioned is murdered. Claire is pulled into the murder investigation as a suspect and then as a decoy working for the police to prove that the husband is indeed the murderer. Or, is he? Claire begins to have her doubts. She begins to fall in love with him. She ends up in a home for unstable people on medication. Things begin to become unbelievable for me by this point. I begin to have a hard time staying interested in the plot. I find I don't really care for Claire or the husband. I feel things are somewhat disjointed. (Perhaps this is because the premise of this book was used by the author before. Then, later the author used the idea to rewrite this new book.) Sorry, this was not my favorite.

Classic psychological thriller, let's mess with your suspicions and try to guess who the killer is. Great for a summer read because there's still plenty of summer left! Not quite as polished as the author's later written but earlier published "The Girl Before."

A well-written and intriguing book about a murder and the actress brought in to compel a confession.
SUMMARY
Claire Wright is a struggling actress, in America without a green card. Claire needs work and money to survive. Then she gets both. But it is nothing like she expected. Claire agrees to become a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. Hired to entrap straying husbands, she must catch them on tape with her seductive propositions. Then the game changes. When Stella, the wife of one of Clare’s targets, is violently murdered, the cops are sure the husband, Patrick is to blame. Desperate to catch him before he kills again, they enlist Clare to lure him into a confession. Claire can do this. She’s brilliant at assuming a voice and an identity. For a woman who is a master at the art of manipulation, how difficult would it be to tempt a killer into a trap? But who is the decoy and who is the prey?

REVIEW
The book sounds really interesting and starts off really strong. Claire’s character drives the narrative, and I am initially intrigued by who she is and what she does. She is a struggling actress trying to make it big, most importantly trying to get her green card, because she can’t go back to Britain. Claire’s backstory in Britain is interspersed throughout the book and her experiences there could have been a book all its own. She can get her green card and stay in the US, if she can just get this confession from Patrick.

But BELIEVE ME will turn you on your head, not just once, but quite a few times, in the quest to find the real murderer. Things and people are not always what they seem in this psychological thriller. Claire character who was strong and confident early in the book, became unreliable and insecure in the later part of the book. I was disappointed to see her turned into such a weak and needy character and my interest waned seriously in Part Three of the book.

The writing is good and flows very well. I even liked having small portions of the narrative set in a script format, it’s certainly in keeping with the theme of the book. The story is robust and includes —Claire backstory, Claires acting classes, Claire’s undercover role, Claire’s role in the Baudelaire play, her love life, and her intense need for attention—it’s all seems a little much. When I tried describing this book to a friend, well, it got complicated! A little to complicated.

J.P. Delaney is the author of The Girl Before. Believe Me is his second novel under that particular name. It was however, previously published as The Decoy, under the pseudonym of Tony Strong. After Delaney’s good luck with The Girl Before, Believe Me was reworked and rerelease under the Delaney name. I have a serious thing about male authors who feel they have to use a generic pseudonym to trick women into buying their books, when they write from a female perspective. And that in exactly what Tony Strong whose real name is Anthony Capella does. “There are some big advantages to using a pseudonym,” he wrote in an email to the NYT, “The first is that people can’t tell from the initials if I am a man or woman—and I’ve been really gratified that many readers have assumed from the way I’ve written from two female perspectives that I’m actually a woman....”. If Delaney seriously wants to write from a female perspective, he perhaps should try and write about strong female characters.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher Ballantine Books
Published July 24, 2018.
Review www.bluestockingreviews.com

This is a totally weird and different book, in which the reader has no real cue what is acting and what is reality until almost the very end of the book. The author definitely keeps the reader guessing in this book that is almost fiction noir with its strange backfrom pf Baudelaire and his necrotic poetry. Claire is an actress from Great Britain, trying for her big role on Broadway when she encounters a man who is obsessed with Baudelaire and wants her to play a lead role in a play that he has written. Becoming involved with Patrick, Claire may be taking a big step into the unknown that could lead to her own demise. This is where the book gets really strange and the reader has difficulty telling what is part of the acting story and what is part of Claire’s real life. The lies that the main characters tell the readers are rampant, making it challenging to follow the plot. It was not until the last few chapters that I understood what had been going on all along. The ending was a surprise twist, of course, but it took a lot of side roads to get there. Knowing the ending now, I am not sure that I would have taken the time to read the whole book. I was very disappointed in the whole sexual theme thing, so this book is definitely not for everyone. It will probably find its niche and faithful readers in those who really enjoy kinky fiction with a lot of mystery and hidden clues.

Believe Me by JP Delaney is a highly recommended deceptive psychological thriller.

Claire Wright is a British actor who has come to America to take classes and hopefully find an acting job. Unfortunately she is here without a green card and can't legally work, but she needs money to live so she ends up working for a law firm specializing in divorce. Her job is to act as a high price hooker and catch on film for female clients their suspected unfaithful husbands negotiating for Claire's services. When one of her clients is found murdered in a hotel room, the husband, Patrick, who turned down Claire's proposition, is the main suspect.

Claire ends up working undercover for the police to try and get Patrick to confess to his murder of his wife. She is forced to do this or risk being deported as an illegal immigrant, but she also felt a connection with Patrick when she was trying to entrap him, so she agrees to the plan. The police also suspect that Patrick is a serial killer.

This is a fast-paced thriller packed full of unreliable narrators, especially Claire. I will freely admit that the plot is preposterous and purposefully deceptive - vital information is held back from the reader in order to create suspense. Does Delaney mess with your mind, withhold vital information, and make you wonder what the heck is going on in this novel? Yup.... and it was simultaneously kind of fun and annoying. I didn't see the ending coming at all.

Claire is an over-the-top unreliable narrator obsessed with acting and her roles. Claire (and the novel) approaches almost everything as a role, a part she is performing, which can also make you wonder what is real. The thing is that the story is very compelling and even when you are shaking your head saying "Really?" you will want to keep reading to see what happens next. I need to note that Patrick is a translator for Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857), a book of poetry dealing with evil and eroticism, which plays a major part in the novel and can be off putting.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House via Netgalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/07/believe-me.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2466332762
https://www.librarything.com/work/21039390/book/158556376
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Wow, what a wonderful read! While I enjoyed and liked The Girl Before, I loved this one! I was hooked from page one and totally engrossed until the jaw-dropping ending. So well-written, and the twists and turns were thrilling and kept me guessing. The characters were complex and intriguing. A must read for lovers of psychological thrillers! Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy. This is my honest opinion.

Great read. Intense from the beginning. Plot twists throughout, constantly guessing who did it. Great ending

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book and provide my feedback. This was a crazy, suspenseful read. Full of so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming. Content was bit dark at times exploring the world of BDSM.

Claire Wright is a young actress that manipulates men working as a decoy for a law firm representing wives that believe their husbands are unfaithful. One of those wives ends up murdered and Claire becomes a suspect. Our was it the husband?

Quick read, but I thought this book was disjointed and all over the place. I enjoyed The Girl Before better.

This book was odd. The suspense seemed to ebb and flow throughout the story, but not in a a good way. Sometimes it felt almost like a "women's fiction" bordering on romance between Claire and Patrick. Added to all this were sections written like a play script. I get that it was because Claire was an actress, but it was rather distracting. The weird part was that as the story shifted in and out of the romantic relationship sections, the reader knows the mystery hasn't been solved (because the book hasn't ended yet) but it is as though the author has forgotten about it and is off writing another book. While I had a lot of issues with the flow of the book, the mystery and basic story line was a good one. I guess I just didn't like the presentation.

This was my favorite thriller of the summer! The concept is fun a little nuts. An out of work actor takes a job as plant for a private investigator, getting paid under the table as a Brit without a green card to snare straying husbands. This works fine for awhile until a wife of a client is murdered and the husband is the primary suspect. The police enlist her to work for them to gather evidence against him. But, they fall in love. Allow yourself to suspend disbelief and just go along with it. It's a fun ride. Trust no one.

Thanks to NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and JP Delaney for the opportunity to read and review her latest book. I was a big fan of The Girl Before and this was another twisty tale.

The title is very appropriate for this book - you have no clue who to believe in this book. Claire is an actress in New York without a green card and desperate for money. She works for a lawyer as a decoy trying to catch husbands in the act of hiring a prostitute. When one of the clients is found murdered, Claire finds herself working for the police to try to trip the husband into confessing. But soon, you begin to wonder just who is trying to catch who and just who you can believe.

I was less enthralled with the poetry sprinkled throughout (about S&M practices) even though that was a key element throughout the story. Some of the dialogue is written in the form of a screenplay, which was interesting because of the acting angle.

So very many twists and turns in this book - just when you think you have it figured out, you don't! A good read.

*3.5 stars rounded up. Can there be too many plot twists? Perhaps. This story is very convoluted. It is told from Claire Wright's first person point of view and she is a most unreliable narrator! A twenty-five-year-old English actress, she is trying to get a fresh start in NYC theatre but needs her green card to get work. So in the meantime, she is taking acting classes and working for a detective agency getting dirt on cheating husbands.

When the wife of the latest philanderer they are investigating is found dead in her hotel room, Claire is suspected because the woman has also been robbed of a great deal of cash and everyone knows Claire is in dire need of money.

But it seems the police really think the husband, Professor Patrick Folger, is the perp and enlist Claire's aid, with her excellent skills at flirtation, to get him to admit it. Buckle your seatbelts from this point on because there are lots of hairpin turns ahead.

A really fast read: I believe it could be gulped down in one long, relaxed day of reading. Claire is not especially likable but she does grow as a person by the end of the story--something I always like to see.

I received an arc of this new thriller from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review. Many thanks!

I’m usually all for psychological thrillers but this one didn’t keep me interested as much as I thought it would. The beginning started out awesome and I really thought this would be a great book.

It starts out with Claire who is a struggling actor with a troubled past. What really got me at the beginning was that this is a book about a serial killer! I love true crime so I was really looking forward to trying to solve the mystery on who the culprit was. The mind games are crazy in this one but around 86% percent of the book, it just got old. One too many twists for my liking. I actually stopped reading it and didn’t resume it until a few days later. Overall it was 3/5 ⭐️

What a awesome book! This is the first time that I’ve read J.P. Delaney but it won’t be my last time. This is a very intense story and written fantasticly. Thanks J.P.

Believe Me had more twists and turns than a roller coaster ride and was equally as thrilling and (a tad) scary. I was drawn to J.P. Delaney’s latest release primarily because I thought her previous book, The Girl Before, was a page turner based on an original concept.

I was not disappointed by this title which took on more of the psychological, and somewhat dark, side. It wasn’t without a few bumps- a couple of slow spots and an important scene that wasn’t nearly as intense as it should have been. This did not change my overall opinion but I did remove one star.

Claire is a Brit, without a green card, living in New York City. She is a struggling actress attending classes at a prestigious acting school here in the States after a bit of an unfortunate relationship with her leading man back home. To make ends meet, she works off book in the role of a decoy for a divorce lawyer. One such job lands her in the middle of a brutal murder and subsequent investigation. Woven throughout the story are connections to Charles Baudelaire, a nineteenth century French poet. Baudelaire’s work was considered scandalous to the point of being censored due to his themes of sex and death.

Believe Me will have you wondering exactly who and what to believe. Did she or didn’t she? Did he or didn’t he? Or, perhaps, the murderer was someone else?? You’ll have to read it all the way to the very end to find out.


FYI - I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was good. Not in my top 5 for the year but a very quick read and definitely had my attention. Started off kind of slow for me but picked up. When it picked up there were twist that I did not see coming. I will share this book
As one to read.

Interesting story and characters. Excellent follow up to The Girl Before. I can’t wait to read JP Delaney’s next book.

I loved how this book started out. It was fast paced and twisty. It had lots of twists and turns but at about the three quarter mark it fell flat and I struggled with the last part. I got tired of the main character. She just kind of annoyed me after a while. I gave this three stars for the beginning and middle. I just couldn't go higher.