The tension in this psychological thriller slowly builds throughout. Plot twists ratchet it up a notch, and then it simmers a while, and then it escalates again.

Claire is a struggling British actress living in New York. Her main source of income comes from working with a law firm to catch unfaithful husband's on camera, providing the video proof to the firm's client, the wife. Not quite entrapment, but pretty close to it. Her job skirts the boundary of being legal, exacerbated by the fact that she's also undocumented. So when one client Claire is working for through the firm ends up dead, she finds her world spinning out of control.

I thought the structure of this book was pretty interesting. Being an actress, Claire immerses herself in her work. She imagines her daily life as a scene in a play, constant dialogue and stage directions running through her head. Claire's character is developed through meetings with a psychologist that is working with the authorities investigating the murder. She comes to the realization that her work as a decoy, and her personal sex life, is actually her acting out her own life as a child in the foster system.

The forensic psychologist believes that the husband in this case is a sociopath, responsible for a string of unsolved murders. Although she is reluctant to have a civilian help in the dangerous investigation, the lead detective convinces her that Claire is perfect to play the part. This could be the role of a lifetime for Claire. But as the act progresses, a few plot twists come about. Claire begins to wonder if she's actually the one on the outside looking in. This one will leave you guessing hot it's going to conclude right up to the final pages.

I would recommend this book to fans of psychological thrillers and suspense. I received this as a free ARC from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Refreshing psychological thriller. Unpredictable and utterly intriguing from start to finish. Claire is both likable and unappealing and very interesting to follow.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Believe Me" by JP Delaney. I got those book because I really liked "The Girl Before" but please note that the writing style between these two books is incredibly different.

I don't want to give too much of the plot of this book away, but in the vein of "Gone Girl" and "Girl on the Train" this books story is told through the eyes of another unreliable narrator, Claire. Additionally, Claire is an actress who oftentimes likes to imagine things playing out in her mind as if she is being directed in a movie or play. Oftentimes, this confused me as to what was "reality" and what was a "game" in her mind.

Either way, although an unreliable narrator, you come to root for Claire throughout the book - in spite of some bad decisions she makes - which keeps you reading until the end. There are also several twists throughout the book, keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Although the writing style is sometimes a little disjointed, if you are fans of the psychological thriller type of book, I think you'll really enjoy "Believe Me." If you find yourself getting stuck about halfway through, my recommendation is to keep reading. The ending totally blew me away...I am still thinking about it!

I would give this book 4/5 stars and recommend to those who enjoyed the "Gone Girl" and "Girl on the Train" type of books. It'll definitely keep you wondering and guessing...and questioning what is true and what is not!

This book messed with my head, big time. See, I liked psychological thrillers. I like reading a book where I don’t know what is going to happen from one chapter to the next. I like damaged main characters. I didn’t think that I was going to get that with Believe Me. I thought this book was going to be your typical who done it with the female main solving the crime. What I got instead was a book that kept me guessing from chapter to chapter. A book that I had a hard time forgetting about once I was done with it. A book that got under my skin. I should have known better than to assume the book was going to be a typical book.

Believe Me’s plot started off simple and progressed into complex. Claire was a British ex-pat actress living in New York City without a green card. Desperate for work, she starts doing decoy work for divorce lawyers. It is that job that puts her in the path of Professor Patrick Folger. His wife is found dead the day after the setup. Claire is brought in for questioning since she was the last person to see her alive. She is recruited by a shady psychologist to get to know Patrick and to get a confession out of him. Little does Claire know that her life is going to be turned upside down and inside out.

Claire was such a complex character to write. As a reader, I love it when characters have different layers to them. Claire definitely had them. There was one point in the book where I was questioning her memories of growing up in foster care. She was such a great actress that she made me, the reader, question what I was reading. I am sure that was the author’s intention. I loved it!!

I didn’t know how I felt about Claire. My feelings for her went from one extreme to another. I could love her in one chapter and then hate her in another. I have never had another book do that for me. Even at the end of the book, when we were seeing the “real” Claire, I was still on edge about her. I mean, was that the real Claire we were seeing or was it another one of her personalities?

I’ve gotta say that Patrick had me fooled the entire book. I went from thinking one thing about him to thinking another to rethinking my opinion. So, needless to say, I was surprised by what he revealed to Claire. I shouldn’t have been but I was. Actually, let me rephrase that. I was more shocked by what he revealed.

I was also surprised that the poem referenced in the book “Les Fleurs du Mal” is an actual book written by Charles Baudelaire. To be honest, I did think that it was made up. Until I did a google search and there was a ton of information about it. I’m not going go too much into him but I will say that those poems are freaky. Google them and him. You’ll see what I mean.

The end of the book was insane. It is where the plotline went from simple to complex. I am not going to get into much of the ending except I wasn’t expecting what happened to happen. Also, as I mentioned above, I wasn’t too sure about Claire. Even with everything revealed, I still had my doubts about her.

There were a few reasons why I didn’t give Believe Me a 5-star rating. The main reason was that the book got off to a slow start. I know that the author was laying the groundwork for Claire’s story but still. It crept. I almost DNF’d (but I am glad I didn’t).

I also felt that the plot faltered towards the middle of the book when Claire was in the mental hospital. I felt that her experiences in that hospital were not relevant to the storyline. It was interesting but not relevant.

My last reason was the last few chapters of the book and how Claire’s secret came out. While it was shocking, I definitely didn’t see it coming. It came out of left field. When the book finally ended, I felt it was anticlimactic.

What I liked about Believe Me:

A) Got under my skin

B) Complex characters

C) The end of the book

What I disliked about Believe Me:

A) Book got off to a slow start

B) Plot faltered towards the middle of the book

C) The ending felt almost anticlimactic

I would give Believe Me an Adult rating. There is sex. There is violence. There is language. I would suggest that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

There is a trigger warning for Believe Me. They are mental illness. If you are triggered by that, I suggest not to read the book.

I would reread Believe Me. I would recommend this book to family and friends. But I would include a warning about the triggers.

I would like to thank Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Believe Me

All opinions stated in this review of Believe Me are mine

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

This is a solid three star book.

Claire is an actress who makes money on the side luring cheating husbands into hitting on her, which she films and gives to a law firm. But when the latest wife is murdered, Claire is asked to go under cover and try to entrap the husband.

Why this book received three stars and not four is because the amount of plot changes. It was good, but a few were a little too far fetched for me. However, it’s still a solid read for those who like fast paced suspense/thriller books.

This review is provided by NetGalley. Believe Me will be available from Ballantine Books on July 24, 2018.
Author J.P. Delaney (no relation to me) provided some history of the book that became Believe Me. It was a different story about an actress going undercover for a sting operation for law enforcement. It was with a different publisher and now out of print. The core premise stuck with Delaney, so after success with what others consider his big break novel, The Girl Before, he went back to the roots of that old story and rewrote it from scratch.
[amazon_link asins='052561866X' template='ProductCarousel' store='amberunmasked-20' marketplace='US' link_id='a96bc7e5-6d7e-11e8-bad4-31543e84921d']
Believe Me is the first of Delaney’s books that I’ve read so I don’t have any other baseline for comparison. In a nutshell: it’s fast-paced, exhilarating, filled with twists, and some graphic details that might put off certain readers. (*Note: if you like the graphic content of shows like BONES or CRIMINAL MINDS, this is along those lines.)
Claire Wright is a British actor trying to make her way into the industry in America. She’s doing so illegally and having a difficult time obtaining the proper kind of acting jobs to secure a green card or visa. At the start, readers might like Claire. She’s a survivor and struggling to get by in New York City. To make any money at all, she works as a honeypot bait — a private investigator, Henry, hires her to see if husbands are cheating on their wives. In this capacity, readers get to see that Claire has to follow a strict set of rules. She can’t be the one to approach the men; she can’t make the offer for sex; she stops the job before there’s any physical contact. Then she gets paid and usually moves on to the next case. Understanding that Claire is capable of following rules is important as she begins to unravel throughout the story.
Stella Fogler hires Henry and Claire, but her job offer comes with dark and terrifying warnings:
“You will be careful, won’t you? Promise me you’ll be careful. He’s like no man you’ve ever met. I mean it. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t trust him. Do you promise?”
Claire thinks Stella is being dramatic and too paranoid. She’s been taking care of herself since she was a kid from an abusive family and moved through foster care. Unlike escorts, Claire is determined to be the best actor possible. To do that, Claire uses The Method approach to acting. It’s where the actor goes beyond researching a role and actually lives as the character, never breaking.
Claire is approached by Detective Frank Durban and Dr. Kathryn Latham, a forensic psychologist. Latham has been tracking a serial killer who fits the profile of Patrick Fogler, Stella’s husband. He’s a handsome poetry scholar specializing in the work of Baudelaire. When Stella is gruesomely murdered in a pattern matching the details of one of Baudelaire’s poems, Claire takes the assignment lest she become a suspect herself as one of the last people to see Stella alive.
The story is outrageous in all the ways amateur detective stories are. Readers know the FBI or NYPD aren’t going to take some untrained civilian and put her in harm’s way like Claire is hired. That’s neither here nor there. You go with it on a bloody and twisted ride. There are sections where Claire replays events and readers don’t get prose paragraphs; the memories and sometimes completely irrational pondering by Claire are typed out like a screenplay. The book is also broken down clearly into three parts following the traditional three acts of a play or movie lending more to the presentation regarding Claire always being in character.
Claire becomes such an unreliable narrator that readers will be wondering how much of the threats against her are all in her head. She’s institutionalized at the end of part two. It seemed like it could have ended there: Claire is suffering from an extreme histrionic dissociative episode and she can’t escape her own mind. Part three reveals why she continued to stay in character the whole time. Latham’s profile of the serial killer states that Claire would have to appear so vulnerable that the prime suspect, Patrick, would be the only possible savior. Having inherited Stella’s money, Patrick has the financial resources to hire a private doctor and lawyers to save Claire.
“In other words, maybe I’m not crazy. Maybe I’m just the kind of woman who male doctors historically haven’t liked very much.” — Claire Wright
By chapter thirty-three, it’s clear that Claire has developed real feelings for Patrick. She admits to liking him and eventually she does fall in love with him. This may be the point where every feminist reader thinks the book is more sexual fantasy crap written by a man. Stay the course. Get to the end. It’s all about method acting and how difficult it is for the Real Claire to separate herself from the Character Claire.
When Claire needs to feel alive, she goes head first into danger with Patrick. They play constant destructive, abusive games with each other while at the same time professing it’s all about trust.
“Not because discovering Patrick’s a murderer would stop me loving him. But because, if he is a murderer, I don’t want him to keep it hidden from me.” — Claire Wright
Again, I say stick with it. Claire has plenty of flashbacks to acting class where her instructor discusses making emotions real and believable. The bottom line is Claire is the ultimate survivor. Readers may not agree with her methods and processes at all, but she manages to be as unkillable as an 1980’s action hero.
Besides the fiction of law enforcement hiring an unemployed actor to go undercover, there’s only one other note I made. A silly one: absinthe doesn’t contain hallucinogens. It is delicious and gets you extremely drunk. If you like the taste of licorice, I highly recommend having some served properly. It comes in green and white varieties and is not illegal.
I don’t know if the real Charles Baudelaire is as fucked up as the one presented by Delaney, who admits that he took plenty of artistic license in translating the French poetry. The character of Baudelaire has religious followers who share photographs of the murders they’ve committed through a portal on the Dark Web behind a site called Necropolis. The theme in using horrific translations of Baudelaire comes down to what responsibility artists bear in the real world if someone is inspired by their work to commit crimes.
“What responsibility do we have, as artists, for the effect our work has in the real world?” a theater director asks of Patrick Fogler regarding his play about Baudelaire.
Since I haven’t read Gone Girl or other psychological thrillers (I’m admittedly too scared most of the time), I can honestly say Believe Me has its share of mindfucks which I think is what authors of this genre intend.
Content Notes:
Graphic violence against women including women of color.
Suicide attempts and self-harm.
Psychiatric institutional scenes including heavy medication.
Rating: 4.5 stars (brilliantly executed, but is definitely not for everyone)

Thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for the advance copy of “Believe Me” by JP Delaney. I will not give any spoilers. It’s a good mystery/Thriller book. It was very well written and you won’t want to stop reading as you want to see and keep guessing what will happen next. I would love to read other books by this author in the future. I enjoyed this book & hope you will too.

“Believe Me” by JP Delaney is a mystery/thriller about a young acting student named Claire who is caught up in a police sting to catch a murderer.
The novel started out with great pacing and characters, but quickly devolved into an absolutely preposterous story with asinine twists and turns.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.




Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the advanced copy.

Intense, Riveting, Gripping, Fast moving book

Claire is a struggling actor who grew up in the foster care system and agrees to work with divorce attorneys to seduce straying husbands and catch their infidelity. The stakes get higher when there is a murder and Claire is asked to try to seduce the killer and get him to confess.

This book was dark and sexy and edge of your seat thrilling. There were times when I was wondering if Claire was acting or not and I could not predict the ending. A portion of the book is written like a script, so it was a fast read. I loved it and I highly recommend it.

A dark and twisted read that will take you along an unsettling ride.The main character Claire wants you to believe her. But don't make the mistake of forgetting that she is an actress, someone who is capable of inserting herself in any role she plays to the point that she believes her own lies. Even though the middle sagged a little bit for me, the ending was a slam dunk well worth the wait.

I found the beginning of this engaging, but I put it down after reading about 30% because it was too dark.

It’s been a while since a book has made me second guess myself as much as JP Delaney’s book, “Believe Me.”
Believe Me is that twisty thriller that will have you constantly changing your mind about “who did it.” Nothing is as it seems in this cat and mouse murder mystery.
This is one of the few books that you will read in spite of the main characters unlikeability, just to see what happens.
Main character, Claire, is a struggling British actress, hoping for that big role on stage and her green card as well.
Unable to find acting gigs, Claire finds herself working for a divorce firm acting out the role of seductress to entrap soon to be ex-husbands.
When one of the firm’s female clients is murdered, the police believe the likely suspect is the husband and enlist Claire’s help to catch him or do they? Are the police really out to nab him or Claire? Are the police who they say they are?
So many questions you will ask during your journey while reading Believe Me.
There is no straight road to the truth in this book but instead takes the reader ona zigzag hairpin ride until the end.
#netgalley #BelieveMe #JPDelaney

I really enjoyed this story. Super twisty and unique, and it was a quick read. My only complaint would be that I couldn’t find any connection to the narrator/main character, though the ability to do so in a thriller is rare anyway.

This book is a mindfuck. Even when I thought I figured out what was happening, I still doubted myself which is unusual. And the way Boudelaire was woven in reminded me of the way Poe was woven in to The Following and that connection is way too coincidental for my liking. I didn’t love the unreliable narrator trick or the way the dialog was staged like a play but it all made sense in the context. Excellent plane or vacation read.

Wow, I was hooked. This book drew me right in. It was all over the place, but in a good way. When I thought it was going in a certain direction it would change course again. It kept me on my toes and my mind wondering!! An absolute must read if you like a twisty, physiological thriller with a little bit of the eerie included!!

A fun sexy thriller where you will be constantly wondering where the acting ends and the real people begin! I very much enjoyed the second novel from JP Delaney and will certainly be looking for more in the future! An interesting premise for sure, an actress hired to "act" the part of a woman interested in married men, generally hired by their wives, hoping to catch them in the act, but when one of these jobs goes wrong, all bets are off.

Well written, great characters and enough surprises to keep you guessing until the very end. I enjoyed Delaney's The Girl Before and couldn't wait to sink my teeth into this one. I wasn't disappointed. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this book more than the author's last one "The Girl Before" (which, according to my Goodreads review, I apparently had a number of issues with.) However I wasn't in love with it. (Although, at the beginning, I thought I MIGHT be.)

The book starts off strong, with a compelling lead character--an actress who has all sorts of issues and a complex back story. She finds herself connected to a murder and is brought in by the police to go undercover and essentially play a part in order to get close to the prime suspect. So far so good. Claire struck me as a bit borderline and her inability to maintain boundaries (which she continually abandons for the sake of her art) made for a juicy premise.

Then things went off the rails a bit, for me personally. There is a bit of a twist (which I was digging), some random BDSM stuff (which I wasn't digging), the production of a play (which I was ok with since I have an acting background, but also felt was a a big plot device that slowed down the narrative), then more murder intrigue (which started to annoy me and strain credibility) and then a big twist ending (which I wasn't feeling at all.)

I think my issue was that Claire was more than just an unreliable narrator, she was an annoying one for whom it is hard to find affection. Although I liked how the reader is constantly wrestling with the question, "Does she really feel this way or is she acting here?" more often than not the answer didn't really matter since she was making such poor, odd choices regardless.

So then you start wondering, "Is this person just totally insane? If so, then maybe is SHE the murderer?" While the book flirts with that question, we remain so firmly rooted in Claire's head that we know that's not going to an option. Instead we're just left watching her make a series of bad choices and/or the blind pursuit of method acting at the expense of her own sanity and safety--which no sane person would ever do. That makes it hard to really root for her or her story.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A thought provoking, nightmare inducing, titillating psychological thriller. When down on her luck British actress Claire takes a job with the NYPD to help catch a serial killer she will question everything she knows to be true...including her sanity. Both curious and repulsive, JP Delaney's new work will have readers begging for more.

I just read “Believe Me” by J P Delaney from #NetGalley. This is a great book and you won’t want to put it down. Claire, an orphan and struggling actress, is here from the UK with no green card. That doesn’t stop her from acting as a pick up artist to entrap unsuspecting men. Videotaping them, she gives the evidence to their wives and collects her pay. But does it stop there? One wife ends up dead after Claire failed to pick up her husband. There’s no doubt that a spark lit when Patrick and Claire met, but will it lead to flame? Which one killed her? Or was it a stranger? This book reminds us that our perception is indeed our reality.