Willow is alone and confined to a bed with restraints. She has no idea how she got there or how long she has been there. All she knows is that an old woman comes to feed her twice a day. There is also a loud thumping noise that definitely isn’t Granny. Then, a cat and Granny die in her room. A boy named Elijah helps her escape her restraints. But will Elijah help her escape her misery or is he holding her hostage?

Cyn Balog does an excellent job with the character development of Willow. I found myself immediately attached to her as a character and rooting for her to escape. The world Balog builds is also interesting. The story is set in the middle of a pandemic. I found the details of the pandemic to be intriguing. The Everglades setting is perfect, and I also enjoyed the details. It’s hard to say much more without giving away the plot of the story. This is a must-read chilling thriller if you enjoy young adult books. I give it 3.5/5 stars.

Willow wakes up tied to a bed and doesn’t remember how she got there. Twice a day, an old lady comes in and feeds her, but doesn’t say anything. Willow hears a sound outside the room … is there a cat? Another captive? Everything changes when the old lady dies and Willow needs to make a plan or die too. She gets her restraints off, but there was someone else in the house. Who is Elijah? Will he help her escape or will he keep her hostage too?

You Won’t Believe Me is a thriller that didn’t keep my attention. This was a very short read, so those looking for a quick escape will find this fits the bill, but things that happened seemed a little too far-fetched and even though the story has a firm ending, it wasn’t satisfying. A good summer read, but don’t rush it to the top of your TBR pile.

OMG! What have I just read?!! I have entered the Twilight Zone! The mystery, suspense, the plot twist at the end! I loved every minute of this book.

Willow Lafayette is a typical high school teenager, minus the fact she is a YouTube star. A pandemic has hit and her scientist father is fired from his job in the midst of finding a cure for the virus. She is abducted and made to believe the world is ending.

Go read this book!

Creepy, thrilling and terrifying describe this novel.
Willow is a teenage girl in Pensacola, Florida, who finds herself trapped in a horrifying new world.
16-year-old Willow Lafayette wakes up restrained to a bed in a room she has never before seen. She has no memory of how she got there, who brought her there, or how long she’s been imprisoned. It seems she is being held captive by an older woman referring to herself as Granny. Granny force-feeds her, food basically inedible. Willow’s life before her capture included, her kinda boyfriend August, her singing channel on YouTube, the pandemic that was quickly spreading throughout the country, and the work of her father. Her father is an internationally recognized epidemiologist who is working on solutions to treat the virus. One day Granny dies suddenly in Willow’s presence and a mysterious boy named Elijah appears and frees her. Elijah tells Willow that the world is ending, due to an experimental drug that has turned people into deadly monsters who are roaming the country. Then he says her father and his research may be at fault.
Willow doesn’t know what to believe or whom to trust.
There are quite a number of plot twists that to this reader began to be frustrating. In 2023, this is a timely, chilling story that explores fear and distrust during a pandemic.
This book is a thriller for ages 12-18.
I think young adult readers will enjoy this one.

This story is quite frightening and thoroughly entertaining! It includes a pandemic, zombies and some curveballs which were surprising. It is dark and needs the reader to focus to experience the nuances.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel in advance! This is a psychological thriller that seemed a little slow going for me in the beginning, but wrapped up interestingly toward the end, which definitely grabbed my attention. The moral of this story is: always be safe online, because everyone is not always who they may seem.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with the advance copy of You Won’t Believe Me.

What starts off as a pretty good horror novel spirals into chaos. I could have followed any of the directions that this books went in but I found it difficult to follow ALL of them. A timely, if not totally satisfying read.

Willow Lafayette is the teenage daughter of a couple of scientists, one of whom has reached some awareness by the public for his work on treatments and vaccines relating to "the screw," a viral contagion responsible for the latest global pandemic. That attention has gone from bad to worse since he's walked away from the company and the mitigation medicine. When death threats get to be too much, he heads south toward Florida with his family.

Willow remembers that much, but when she wakes up bound to a bed, fed gloppy porridge by an elderly stranger she's taken to calling Granny, she cannot recall what happened between these two situations. One minute hitting the road, next bound like a prisoner. In time, she will find her release, thanks the Granny's untimely death, and meet another young man who has some dire pronouncements about the current situation: that part of the pandemic called "the screw" was only the beginning. Elijah's story is one taken from nightmare: A second pandemic unleashed by the medicines her father was tinkering with has only made things worse. The world has come apart at the seams, and people who seems friendly can turn rage zombie deadly in an instant. It's best to hide away, stay quiet, not attract unwanted attention … and if someone shows up, they need to be quickly put down and then buried before they come back. That's the problem with the sick people of this world. They keep coming back.

It's an almost impossible story to believe, but small clues compel her. There's the pounding sounds from behind that locked door—other prisoners would at least respond with voices, this is just thudding fists beating on the walls. Then, there are the graves, and her car with two rotting corpses in the front seats (Mom and Dad?), and the wandering stranger Elijah dispatches with ease and then hastens to inhume. Then, there is the ruined bridge, and the smoke that's coming from the burning city of Fort Lauderdale … They have no working power, no way to communicate with the outside world. They will have to learn to trust one another if the are to continue surviving.

Well, that is far less easy than it seems. While Willow is helpful at planting different veggies and otherwise not rocking the boat, she's finding troubling threads in her own and Elijah's behaviors that make her wonder if either of them can be trusted. And as the evidence mounts that her benefactor might in fact be one of the crazies she should beware, Willow is caught in a true survival horror scenario: without him, she's surely doomed but if he's growing increasingly dangerous. Although Willow's praying that her secret high school love August Rule will come to save her, she also must come to terms with the very simple that she must find the strength to free herself. Can she do so?

Cyn Balog's novel You Won't Believe Me is a gripping psychological suspense yarn, which pits a young woman against a hostile world after relocating her from her urban comfort zone to the rural fringes. There, she is confronted with mystery and horror scenarios, coerced into developing new skills and trust, and then finding herself forced to choose between comforting lies or uncomfortable truths.

Published under the YA banner, it is nevertheless a page turner of a read, overflowing with incident, suspense, and psychological insights. And as the title alludes to, particularly in the way that LIE Is highlighted in the world Believe, there are some twists in store that will recast truths we've taken for granted in new lights. Some of these related to the conversations Willow had with fellow student August Rule, who maintained an online flirtation with her that he dared not drag into the real world. Others will relate to the ruined house and festering ground it squats upon. And still others will arise from Willow's own identity or at least her sense of herself.

This is a novel that takes great glee in recontextualizing events and situations we've read with a sudden revelation. It also loves to seed doubts into seemingly innocuous conversations and inner monologues, so that just when we think the story is content to settle into a familiar genre path, it veers into an unexpected direction.

Some readers may well be disoriented by the number of shifts in gear the story takes. I was rather impressed with Balog's ability to juggle the many seeds and to continually up the stakes without hitting a false note. This is a book that rewards attentiveness in its readers. It is a clever narrative starring a clever protagonist caught in a situation that's almost too much to believe. But believe she must if she wants to live another day.

Balog's prose is told in the first person and constrained to Willow's point of view. Thus the mysteries of the few people she interacts with and the world she's occupying are all coming to us in real time. And there is a meticulousness to the details, an employment of repetition for a real goal … which is not revealed until near the end.

The book is divided into three sections and a prologue. The first section is the lengthiest, and each of its chapters opens with some text messages Willow shared with August Rule before her family's flight and her interment. With the second section, those "flashback" elements vanish completely and the story advances a few months. The final section takes place a month after that, and raises some interesting questions about Elijah's past, Willow's present, and the fear of what is to come for the world.

Balog excels at writing prose that builds upon paranoia. Sure, the character starts to feel her world coming apart with the possibilities, but best of all, the author uses the reader's own thriller genre experience against them, setting up false leads and blind alleys and using them to hide the real twists. Regular readers of apocalyptic fiction and psychological suspense may see a few of the curveballs before they come, but there are enough honestly surprisingly moments that I was thrown off course more than once.

You Won't Believe Me is an entertaining though nail-biting novel, eager to share its mysteries if only to draw us deeper into Willow's increasingly dread-filled perceptions. It's a novel that invokes zombie horror movies, while never straying into the bloody mayhem of such fare. It's a book that gives us some insights into dangerous psychopathologies, while never letting us rest easy on just who we can trust. It's a book that invites us into a strange world overflowing with upset and emotional turmoil, which uses deceptions to get to deeper, core truths. And it's as relentless a read as you're bound to find this year.
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Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks FIRE for offering an eARC edition in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

I would rate this 2.5/3 stars out of 5. I did not feel particularly connected to the characters - and the plot felt really repetitive and drawn out. I'm sad about my rating to be honest. I had really high hopes for this novel based on the synopsis!

Review: Wow! What a ride this book was!!! I was a little confused at first, but once I got to part two, I felt that I caught up. This book is for sure going to give me nightmares! I loved that Balog used the pandemic, but used her own virus to make it more sinister! The ending was truly a shock! I just don’t have the words to describe how much I loved this book! You just need to go out and read it now!! It comes out June 27th. Thank you @netgalley and @sourcebooksfire for my advanced copy!!

Willow only has vague memories of who she is. She woke up tied to a bed, getting fed pills that make her forget by an old woman. When the old woman stops giving her pills, Willow begins to remember her text conversations with a boy named August and the pandemic that kills anyone who doesn't take the pills - and shortly, that's Granny. Then a boy named E appears who eventually lets Willow out of the room. He tells her a second plague has come and the dead are coming back to life. Willow wants to go back home, but how can she know if E is telling her the truth?

Whew, this story had so many twists! At first you think she was kidnapped, then you think she's in a post-pandemic, post-apocalyptic world, and the whole last half of the novel is everything she knows being turned upside down. And then back again? By the end I didn't know who to believe. But it was highly entertaining and fast-paced and scratched a little of the itch I've had since I finished binge-watching "The Last of Us."

“You Won’t Believe Me,” is one of those novels that has a great premise but fails to deliver, unfortunately.

First of all, the story was trying to be to many things at the same time. As a result, it was hard to tell if it was trying to be a thriller, romance, or post apocalyptic story. This did not work. It became a drag, hard to read, and confusing.

The characters were one dimensional, we didn’t get much of a back story on them and there was a lot of repetition in the first half. This may have of been alright had the story knew what it was. However, it did not, so it didn’t work. As a result, as a reader, I could not relate and/or connect with the characters.

The ending, simply, a let down. The Epilogue went on so long I thought it was the beginning of a new book.

Was there potential? I think so. In my opinion, the story needed to know what it was, and have a clear and concise finish line.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with an eARC of this book to read and give an honest review.
I enjoy Cyn's books. I've been reading her stories for quite a few years and I find she has a knack for the unbelievable and mysterious. Thrown in a little thriller and you have a recipe for great stories.
Unfortunately, this particular book of hers missed the mark for me. I really wanted to love it. And I will say the story had some good scenes, but mostly I was bored and I figured out the main part of what was happening early on.
Willow's character was done well. She is the epitome of a victim who desperately believes what she's being told. No doubt, in such a strenuous and crazy situation, this may happen to anyone. Especially with the gaslighting that was going on from Elijah. I don't want to get into their relationship too much as I don't want to ruin the story for others but suffice it to say, he is not who he appears to be.
There were times when the thrill of the booked pushed me along, and other times when the world building had me bored and wishing something, anything would happen.
The introduction of the weird flip at the end did nothing for me. It seemed like it was thrown in so the ending could leave you wondering but mostly it was just an odd thing to have in the story after 90% of the story consisted of something different. Maybe it was to make Elijiah look really crazy. Maybe it was to put total doubt in Willow's mind. And then the scene in the movie theater was very far out there.
Overall, I did not love this book as much as I would have liked. I am sad to have not enjoyed one of Balog's stories as I know she's had some really great ones.
I do love the cover and the way the "lie" is highlighted.
Her fans may or may not enjoy this one from her. Hard to say.

You Won’t Believe Me started out strong and had my interest immediately. I did enjoy the ending as well, but there was a lot of drag & slow in the middle. The meandering with no apparent purpose, bogged me down several times.

I think the characters and plot could have been so much more. The idea and twists were great, but the action and interest was lacking.

I was given an advance copy of this book for review purposes.

You Won’t Believe Me Review!!

Thank you Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley for this gifted e-copy, in exchange for an honest review! You Won’t Believe Me comes out June 27, 2023!

I’ve always been a big fan of kidnapping books and how the victim has to survive their capters, so I immediately requested this one!! You Won’t Belive Me was a 3.5/5 ⭐️ for me! I didn’t realize that this one had to do with a pandemic, so it read a bit like a dystopian! I loved the setting in the Everglades and it made this book that much more creepy. I am absolutely terrified of alligators and crocodiles. 😬 This one had a unique plot, but there was just a little too much going on in this one for me and the ending was so strange and unexpected!

A pandemic has spread over the nation. The medication that prevents people from dying has run low and there is a shortage. Willow Lafayette has found herself in a strange house with a strange boy who has informed her of a second wave that has caused an apocalypse...or has it? Willow can't remember what happened to her and how shevended up wirh the boy Elijah. He won't fully explain what's happened, but the world is ending and people who die always come back. In this apocalyptic mystery will take you on a roller coaster of emotions.

10 Cloverfield Lane meets Knock at the Cabin in this young adult suspense thriller following a 16 year old girl who wakes up tied to a bed with no memory of how she got here and the only contact she has is an old woman who drops off food twice a day and a teen boy who claims that there is a plague outside and that they need to stay together and inside if they want to stay safe... yet the more time she spends there the more she thinks he is hiding something and she’ll have to figure out if she can believe him or not. Willow Lafayette is the daughter of doctors who are working on curing a widespread disease, akin to the pandemic. She’s been messaging a boy she is in a sort of relationship with... but then suddenly she wakes up with no memory of what happened to her and why she is tied and restrained in this house. She then meets Elijah, a teen who is also in the house who tells her that the plague has only gotten worse and that they need to stick together to survive.... but he’s hiding so many things and the more time she spends there the more question she has such as why he doesnt want them to go out and try to find other survivors... why he is isolating her so much... yet she can’t ignore the love between them... but is she a hostage or is he right and the plague is happening and monsters await her outside? Unfortunately this one fell flat for me, I went into this blind hoping I would have a better time if I didn’t know what it was about but it really tried to do so many things and kind of not worked at all. I think if your fans of thrillers this one would be an interesting read for you for sure.

*Thanks Netgalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire, Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me a copy to read, I really appreciate it. I’m sorry but this was all over the place and not what I expected at all, I’m sorry but I’m calling this a quits and throwing in a towel it’s a DNF and I have no deserve to try and finish it.

So many topics covered in this this YA book.
   A wild virus emerges: pandemic ensues, not enough drugs, forced lockdowns, deaths and fake news that the world is ending.
   The insecure teenage daughter of one of the scientists trying to find a drug for the cure is gaslighted by a young man who’s sister died from the disease after taking a test drug and he plans and plots to kidnap her in revenge……….but the reader doesn’t know that, so we are carried along in the Armageddon Theory.
   Once kidnapped, the reader thinks maybe this is going down an Adam/ Eve story………then it’s Romeo/Juliette…..and finally the real thing--- Stockholm Syndrome. She is being meticulously brainwashed.
   They learn how to live off the land, stay off the grid and she thinks they are the only ones alive. A series of events finally cause her to doubt what she’s been told and to act out.
   A return to reality isn’t easy…….she’s a miracle and people want to know all about it……..all taking a toll on her mental status and the lasting effect of indoctrination.
   The author was certainly creative and convincing making it a fun read.