Couldn't put it down! A great concept, intriguing characters, kept me guessing! I loved it! I have already recommended it to friends!

An original perspective on the concept of 'the honey trap' and entrapment that raises numerous ethical issues but produces a quirky, dark thriller with addictive qualities. There is a mix of writing styles, including poetry, scripts and interviews.

Claire is a British drama student living in New York, her opportunities for making ends meet are scarce, so she uses her acting talents and earns 'cash in hand' money from a firm of divorce lawyers, acting as a 'pick up' in hotel bars to trap straying husbands.

Claire is the unreliable protagonist, at her happiest playing other people and so it's difficult to establish who she truly is. When someone dies her role escalates, she is co-opted to trap the suspected killer. The thriller's intensity increases and fantasy and reality merge with dangerous results.

The only thing predictable about this thriller is its unpredictability. If you accept, nothing is as it seems or what you expect and enjoy the show its an absorbing thriller.

I received a copy of this book from Quercus Books via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Sorry, I really did not enjoy this book. It began well, holding my attention, then quickly became very American, boring and not by taste at all.

Thanks for allowing me to read and review anyway.

Claire is about to take on the hardest role of her life. As an aspiring English actress at a New York drama school can Claire pull of her toughest role yet? Running from a past she hasn’t yet come to terms with her self, but praised at every turn by her drama teacher Claire ends up in the middle of a murder investigation.

I found the book intriguing to read and kept wanting to turn the pages.

Another great book by JP Delaney. The story held my interest throughout the book and I liked the character development.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Quercus Books and J P Delaney for the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of Believe Me.
I thought the storyline was good. The premise of the story is certainly different to other thrillers I have read in the past. I did find the book a bit slow to start but the pace does pick up the more you delve into the story.

Believe Me is a book where you don't trust anyone. I MEAN THIS, TRUST NO ONE. Not the charming man at the bar, not the professor, not even our protagonist.

This book was tricky and I was unable to put it down because I had to know what happened. There were too many mysteries. Who is Patrick really and is he a twisted killer? Can Claire trust anyone? Can we even trust Claire? However, now I'm still unsure what to make of it. It deceives you in such a way you can't even trust our eyes, the main character.

Claire is a complex character and at times verges on sociopathic and cunning. But given the structure of the book, with it's emphasis on acting with snippets of script, how much is true and how much is fiction? Even after spending a whole book with her Claire is a mystery. Is she a talented actress or did her difficult childhood leave a lasting imprint on her psyche?

I think that The Girl Before was a better structured read but whether you love it or hate it, Believe Me is definitely compelling - you'll be on the last chapter before you know it. This is a 2.5, maybe a 3 stars. I liked it but I would prefer to root for/like some of the characters and the ending has left me a little bit unsatisfied. However, at times, it was genuinely clever and I liked the prologue and the use of scripts.

Wow this is an absolute cracker of a book, chilling with a hint of romance (or is it) I absolutely loved this story.

One of my favourites this year.

Enjoyed the story of the book which tells the tale of Clare, a wanna-be actress with no green card in the US who resorts to working for a firm of lawyers to entrap cheating husbands and provide evidence to their wives.
After chatting to one particular target one evening, his wife is found brutally murdered and her husband is the prime target. Clare is asked to work for police to gain his trust and see if she can get a confession. The story has lots of twists and turns and you never quite know if it's what it seems. Good twist at the end but does end up quite far fetched.

I really enjoyed this book, it was easy to read and well written. I liked all the characters and the twists.
There is a lot of reference to Baudelaire, so if you have no interest in erotic poetry this may not be for you.
However, overall I enjoyed this book and thought it had a great ending.

Reviewed on Facebook group - Bookclub by Mowie

An original plot, something a little different. Claire wants to be an actor but he to earn some money while trying to get her break.
I don’t want to give away the plot but the book was gripping with lots of twists and turns. I didn’t guess the end.

I'm not 100 per cent sure if I hates this book to be honest. Not because the writing was bad or the story was uninteresting, but because there was not one likable character in the whole book.
The story itself was intuiging, although a little far fetched and the writing was excellent.
I don't generally like to leave a review if I have not enjoyed a book but I feel this book is going to be like marmite, you will either love it or hate it.

Writing this review will be impossible for me so I will have to take a different approach.

Let’s start with the cover which in my opinion is very eye catching. It was the main reason why I noticed it and just had to have it. It’s simple, with little information and bold writing. That’s all you really need to catch your attention and the rest you can find inside.

Ok, that wasn’t so difficult. Now to a difficult part. This book is insane! I have never ever read anything that not only kept me interested throughout but also I had absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. The truth you make up in your head gets shattered by turning another page and you are right back where you started.

Claire, very talented wannabe actress, comes to US from UK in pursuit of her dreams and new life. Life in US without a green card is not easy and just to get by and survive she has to take on job, she never imagined to do. Her acting skills help her to become a lure to compromise strayed husbands and give evidence at court during divorce. Everything changes with that one client, one wife and one death. Although police does believe husband is the killer, they have no evidence and Claire gets entangled in secrets, acting, truth and lies and I certainly got totally lost there too.

Amazing book with some weird stuff going on but definitely worth the read. I gave it 5 stars but just for the unexpected turns and all the chaos it created in my head it would deserve a lot more.

Claire was orphaned as a child and fought her way through the foster system to get to a drama school in America as all she has wanted to do is to act. At least that last bit is true, but how much of everything else the reader is fed in this psychological drama is real? a third of the way into this book I was on the point of giving up. You have to admire Claire for her ability to cope with the situations she finds herself in, and cope all by herself as she has no one else to support her. But then, once into the main storyline of acting as the bait to entrap a murder suspect into giving something away, the story twists on itself as the reader is as shocked as Claire to find the tide has turned. Claire then finds herself in a 'One flew over the Cuckoo's nest' situation which left me wondering if it was legal, let alone possible in this day and age. Extricating herself from that, Claire returns on a different basis to the murder suspect who then becomes her rescuer. Things are looking up - until another murder, at which point Claire is convinced the unknown murderer is coming for her next. Now both Claire and the reader are paranoid, and not without cause. Although by the ending I was shouting at Claire not to trust him, I was still shocked by events and finished the novel still not quite sure what was truth and what was Claire acting a part. Certainly a novel to keep you on your toes.

To say I've read a few psychological thrillers over the past few years, I haven't read any by JP Delaney. So I was intrigued to see if I would enjoy his book and writing style, as much as his sky high sales suggest I would.

Claire Wright is a British drama student living in New York who finds herself struggling to make ends meet financially.
Claire has never wanted anything more than to become an actress and pretending to be someone else. It's what she's wanted to do since she was eleven years of age. So to help pay the tuition fees her scholarship doesn't cover, she gets a job working as a honeytrap. She can't get work acting because she doesn't have a green card and so has no union membership. This eventually leads to her working for the police in the case of Patrick Fogler, a man being investigation for murder...I'm unwilling to disclose much more. This is definitely a book to read knowing as little as possible about the plot line, so as not to ruin any tension or surprises.

Wow!! What an excellent read. This novel is centred around the concept of the unreliable narrator, which isn't a new way of telling a story, but certainly a compelling one when done well, as is certainly the case here! "Believe me" when I say this book is definitely worthy of a read, a psychological thriller full of intrigue, suspicion, doubt and mystery. This may be my first JP Delaney book, but won't be my last, I'm just shocked i've not read any of his works before.

With many thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for the opportunity to read this ARC in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Interesting read. Lots of twists and turns. An original plot makes for a refreshing break from the norm

I struggled to finish this book and the method of having most of it written like a script seemed a lazy tactic.

Plot twists, suspense, romance. This story has everything. I literally could not put this book down. From start to finish I was hooked. I can't give any details as I don't want to give anything away! 100% recommend.

I would firstly like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows Claire Wright, who liked to play other people. A British drama student, in New York, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands. When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she's being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer? ..... Or the only decent husband she's met? And is there more to this set-up than she's being told?

After enjoying this author's first book, 'The Girl Before', and seeing multiple 5 stars reviews for this one, I was excited to read it. However I was a little disappointed.
While the plot itself was intriguing and overall very cleverly-written; there were also many aspects to this book that I just didn't like at all.

Firstly I didn't like that most of the dialogue in this book was written as a script. I don't know if it would of looked better in a physical copy of this book, but reading it on a kindle and as a ARC, it looked so untidy, with hardly any punctuation, and it just bugged me so much.
Secondly, while Claire was a brilliantly-written character and I enjoyed the plot; the parts that referenced the french play honestly just bored me. While I appreciated the part it played in the story, the paragraphs that were solely telling the story of the play just didn't interest me at all.

However I still think this book is worth a read - purely just for the excellent writing of Claire and that ending!?!?

This book had me hooked straight away. I loved that the narrator was so unreliable and it kept me guessing until the end. I thought it was interesting the way Claire narrated much of the dialogue as a play script to reflect her acting experience. My thought of who was the killer flipped from chapter to chapter and it was only in the last couple of chapters that I finally made up my mind!
I’ll certainly be seeking out more by this author