This book is amazing. I absolutely LOVED "The Girl Before". This book is darker and creepier, and kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't put it down! The character development is wonderful. I could picture each of the characters so well from the descriptions, and truly didn't know what was going to happen.

Psychological thrillers are fun to read and the best ones will keep you guessing right up to the very end. "Believe Me" does just that.

Our heroine is a 25 year old actress from England. She is in New York as a student studying drama. Previously, when she was 17 and still in England, she had a brief affair with an actor that went bad. As a result she was pretty much blacklisted there and had to succeed in New York. She also worked, under the table, for a team of divorce lawyers getting taped evidence of cheaters. One night she goes to a hotel to meet an unhappy wife who warns her to be careful of her husband and to be leery of him. She goes to the bar and eventually meets the man who is good looking, intelligent and charming. He also will not do anything more than speak with her in the bar. When he leaves she returns to the room to get paid and tells the wife what happened. During the course of the night, the wife is brutally murdered and the real story begins. The police are convinced either she or the husband is the culprit and she agrees to work undercover, acting, to learn the truth. The poetry of Baudelaire is also interspersed into the story. It deals with BDSM, murders, psychosis, various kinds of abuse and the application of this all. It is very well written and will grab the reader from the onset and not let go. Thanks to Net Galley and Ballantine for an ARC for an honest review.

I really got into the first part of this book, thinking "oh yeah, this could be a 5 star read." Unfortunately, it got bogged down in high falutin' never-ending discussions and quotes from Baudelaire which admittedly were over my head. And the final reveal was crazy. Do you mean to tell me that even her inner thoughts were part of her performance??? Not buying it!

Thanks to Net-Galley for the advance copy. (Apparently, it's a re-release coming out under the author's pseudonym of J.P. Delaney)

Well, this book did keep me guessing, although I’m not sure I liked the storyline. With all the references to Baudelaire & poetry, I lost interest at times. Also, the book is written in parts like a script, which I found confusing at times. Good mystery that kept me guessing, I think the storyline was just not my cup of tea.

Well well well, this was quite the interesting read! I was completely engrossed in this book and flew through the pages, I found myself at 60% before I even looked up from my Kindle. By the way, at about 59% -60%, a nice twist is thrown in that I did NOT see coming! Mouth hanging open! I was so excited at that point to continue. Great job to the author! How does that saying go.... Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! (tongue in cheek).

Claire is an actress low on money, needing to pay rent and also needing a green card. Hired by wives to prove their husband's are cheaters, Claire tries to entice them to cheat while recording for proof. One of the wives though is murdered and found in a hotel room, the same hotel Claire met with the husband. The cops approach Claire and want to use her as a decoy to try to get a confession out of the husband, the main suspect. She is desperate and agrees. Claire was a very intriguing character. This book did start to drift into erotic territory at times, and just as I was starting to think oh no, it drifted back to normalcy. haha...

The ending.... oh that ending, I am left a bit confused I will admit and need some clarification. I kind of hate when a book does that to me... This may be considered a spoiler, so beware, stop reading.. I am not sure that I enjoy the books with narrators that lie to us during the course of the whole book and then drop a bomb shell on us at the end. hmmm.. not sure how I feel about that.... end spoiler.... Which leaves this book a 4 star for me opposed to 5. This was a very interesting plot line and I would like to read more of this author's work. A big thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for allowing me an advanced copy of this book! Greatly appreciated!

A-freaking-mazing!! Oh my god, JP Delaney is the bees knees!
Ill admit, I thought this book was going to be a total waste of time in the beginning. After my roaring adoration for The Girl Before, I was ready to be let down. But at the 20% mark I fell full throttle. OH MY GOD.

So good. I’ve never wanted to crack a characters head open as deeply as I did with Claire! I wanted to know, more than anything, what was going on in there!

JP did a phenomenal job of leading us down multiple pathways, without it being over done or unbelievable. I’m so sad that y’all have to wait until July to get your hands on it! If Believe Me is up for preorder, do it! So amazing!

I did not find this story believable enough to give it a rating of higher than 3-stars. Added to that I found the writing to be rather choppy. Not a book I could recommend to others.

Claire is a British actress in America, in order to stay in the country she needs a job, and fast. It’s not the sort of job that’s going to win her a Oscar, but Claire can’t be choosy. She’s hired by a law firm to trap straying husbands by enticing them to cheat on their wives, it’s sleazy, but it’s a job. The the wife of a man Claire is trying to catch out, is murdered and her husband is the main suspect. The cops want Claire to seduce a confession out of the man, and while she’s nervous, she believes she can do it. But can she? And have the police even got the right suspect? Edge of you set excitement with a twist you won’t see coming

An excellent example of a psychological thriller novel with tons of twists and turns. Every time I thought I figured it out something would change. Claire is a British actress want-to-be living in NY city trying to make ends meet by working for a law firm while taking acting classes. She is approached by a cop and a psychological profiler who want to use her as bait in an undercover operation. But is that what is really happening, or is Claire suffering from paranoid disorder? What is real and what is an act that she is practicing? Fascinating story that I read in one day!

4.5 stars
A well written, tight, twisty, turny, psychological thriller that kept me turning the pages as fast as I could. Subject matter was dark, so not a book for everyone. Who do you believe? Or do you believe at all? Definitely recommend this one.

I started this book yesterday and I couldn’t put it down. You fall in love with Patrick and the ending was just amazing. Always kept me guessing. Thank you netgalley for letting me read this book!

A highly unusual Book that sucks you in slowly. A bit slow at the beginning but I got drawn in once I got past the first chapter. Mesmerizing.

Last year JP Delaney jumped on the ever so popular female driven thriller bandwagon with The Girl Before, the book I personally found thoroughly underwhelming (although perfectly readable) with the most notable thing about it being a certainty (at the time) that the author was a woman. Apparently not. Gone are the days of women authors taking up gender nonspecific pseudonyms or versions of their own names just to be taken seriously by genre aficionados. This is an example of the reverse of that. Interesting. So anyway, to follow up the inexplicable success of The Girl Before JP Delaney did something genuinely unoriginal, he dusted off a 16 year old book of his originally published under his real name Tony Strong to no fanfare and some very lackluster reviews on GR, revamped it to fit into the new millennia, renamed it, slapped a new cover on it and here it is, getting a second life. Was it worth the effort? Sure, why not…with exactly that level of enthusiasm. It’s much like so many thrillers out there and it’ll appeal to less discriminating fans. Having expectations sufficiently adjusted after The Girl Before I wasn’t particularly disappointed by this one. Believe Me is, authentic to the tile, all about trust. Specifically a relationship between two murder suspects, a love story built on and around paranoia between a Baudelaire obsessed professor and an aspiring actress. The story is told from the perspective of the latter, so you have an essentially unreliable narrator, in fact both leads are all too good at lying. The outcome is two narcissistic over the top melodramatic characters (and to think only one is an actress) you don’t really care about playing games with each other. It has a vibe of an erotic thriller without all the sex, just that sort of flamboyant tackiness. Then again it manages to be very readable and the suspense is maintained throughout, although it does strain the credulity. How far does one go with method acting exactly? Anyway, the Baudelaire angle is nice. The plot offers a few surprises along the way, desperately trying to not be predictable. The book reads quickly. It is sort of fun, all the new/old tricks Delaney has up his sleeve. Thanks Netgalley.