Believe Me is a dark, sexually charged psychological thriller that kept me engrossed from the moment I picked up the book until I put it down. This was a one sitting read because I couldn’t stop turning pages to see what happened next!

Claire is a young British actress in New York running from a tawdry past back home. She’s an excellent actress attending college on a scholarship but there’s one problem: she has no green card, which means her chances of getting acting jobs are almost nil.

She’s broke and will do almost anything for work, so she puts her gifted acting skills to use pretending to be a high priced hooker for a divorce law firm so she can entrap cheating husbands for their suspicious wives. Claire is excellent at her job until the night she’s hired by Stella Fogler to entrap her husband Patrick, a Columbia University professor well-known for his translations (and obsessions) of 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire’s book of sexual and controversial poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). Patrick doesn’t take the bait but only talks to Claire of Baudelaire’s poetry. When Claire tells his wife he didn’t accept her advances, Stella appears agitated and frightened…that night she’s brutally murdered.

Patrick is the main suspect in his wife’s murder but there’s more: the police believe he’s a serial killer inspired to murder women by Baudelaire’s darkest, most deviant poems about sex and death. Claire is given the role of her life when she’s sent undercover by the police to get a confession from Patrick. She throws herself wholeheartedly into her role, falling deeply into his darkness to lure him into her trap.

I loved the format of how Claire would relay the story at times as if she were narrating it as a play; it gave a lot of impact to her egotistic desire to be the center of attention and showcased not only her acting skills but enhanced her unreliability as a narrator. It made you ask, who really is Claire? The young actress the reader met at the beginning? Or the one who was pulled into the darkness? Regardless, Claire is a wonderful protagonist while being the ultimate unreliable narrator.

The story is quite twisted and throws the reader off balance several times. You definitely have to suspend your belief with this book but Delaney has written a highly entertaining and fast-paced novel! There are so many twists in this book that I was left guessing several times. I thought I had figured things out but I was wrong!

As a literature major who studied Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal as a graduate student I thoroughly enjoyed the premise of the murders revolving around Baudelaire’s poems since he is one of the major influencers of French literature and worldwide modern writings as we know it, going as far as influencing major 20th century writers, music artists from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Stones song Sympathy with the Devil, and much more. His poems about sex, death, and perversion were certainly scandalous in their day and still are a little over the top for some, yet they made for a brilliant plot device for a deviant serial killer to inspire and stage his murders. Kudos to Delaney for the originality of his premise!

While I enjoyed the author’s first book, The Girl Before, Delaney has raised the bar with this latest novel. I highly recommend it for some mind-twisting thrills…who is the real sociopath in this game of deception? Who is the prey? You don’t want to miss this suspenseful novel this summer!

**Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for ARC in exchange for my fair and honest review.**

I loved Claire, and the cat and mouse nature of this story. Such interesting twists and turns, and enough drama to keep me dreaming. I loved the stories of Claire's work more than the murder mystery, but together, it was a four star book! Enjoyed it so much!

While I totally loved Delaney’s debut, The Girl Before it had mixed reviews among my Goodreads friends and one of the biggest complaints was that the entire story didn’t seem plausible. I’m generally not bothered by that, I read fiction because the idea of something far fetched happening intrigues me to no end, so I ended up on the love it side of the fence. This time around I wasn’t as pleased, I didn’t actively dislike Believe Me but I definitely did not enjoy it as much as TGB and I think it’ll be another polarizing read.

Claire is a typical psychological thriller narrator, her reliability is questionable and she’s extremely interesting because of it. She’s broke and new to NYC and desperately wants to stay, she has no desire to go back home to London so when she gets an opportunity to make some fast cash as a decoy she happily accepts. I never really liked her as a character but she did fascinate me, her motivation wasn’t clear and she definitely kept me guessing. There was a sense of the same addictive writing style here as in TGB and I definitely was curious about how things would end, but I wasn’t even half as invested which is troubling.

I found the premise to be somewhat believable but the things that followed were outrageous and wild. I really don’t want to spoil anything but everything from the decisions that Claire made to the outlandish directions Delaney took the story left me pretty unsatisfied. It was one of those books that got worse as I got further along instead of better and I just couldn’t muster up any excitement in the end. If you don’t mind suspending all disbelief while reading then maybe this will work better for you though as it is really well written and a pretty fast read.

Thanks to netgalley.com for this ARC.

I really had fun with this book. It was suspenseful and had some interesting and unexpected twists. I really didn't know where the story was going at times.
While parts were a little unbelievable the story was captivating and kept you reading. I finished the story in one day and could have kept reading more.

The narrator was completely unreliable and the rest of the characters not very nice but tat added to the story.

I'm glad I was given the opportunity to read this one!

An unreliable narrator, a storyline that is both twisted and twisty, and a cat and mouse game that you're never quite sure of who's the cat. All of these should've made for an intense and exciting psychological thriller, except it didn't. Part of that can be attributed to the many times the story is written like a script, including stage directions. Not the whole book, but quite a lot of it. I get it, our narrator is an actress who fully immerses herself into her role, but the back and forth between novel and script was distracting and for me, a nuisance. Nevertheless, the story manages to hold its own for awhile. The premise, while intriguing, is completely unrealistic, but this is fiction, so I kept going. About the halfway mark, it starts going downhill and not only becomes somewhat confusing at times, but becomes more and more unbelievable until the conclusion, which threw it way past unrealistic and into the realm of ludicrous. A dark story with lots of twists and packed full of unreliable characters is usually something I can get behind, but in the end, the cons far outweighed the pros on this one.

I found this novel very difficult to get through. The premise is simple: Claire Rodenburg is a struggling Brit in America, with no visa, no money, and on the verge of getting kicked out of the apartment she shares with an aspiring actress. To try to make ends meet, she pretends to hit on married men to help their wives catch them in the act. Unfortunately, it goes too far one time. Suddenly she is a decoy in a murder investigation, falling for the alleged perpetrator accused of murdering his wife. The premise is interesting but this novel never quite managed to pull me in. For instance, the constant breaking into the way a scene is written in a script was very distracting. Another was Claire falling for Patrick, the alleged perpetrator. After 51% I had to shelve it.

It took me awhile to get into this book but once I got into it the story itreally had me hooked. A young actress in school hoping to get a part that will change her life finds herself working with the police to catch a killer. This assignment really tests her acting skills and gives her a role she will never forget. Is she really acting or is this who she really is? Read the book to find out.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

The story line is good, but I feel like it could be told better. I'm not a fan of the parts of the writing that are like a play script, but I understand that it is part of who Claire is. The ending wasn't great either, but that may be because I wanted it to turn out with Claire being sick and twisted!

With a very clever plot, Delaney has done it again with Believe Me. Just who do we believe? This book will keep you guessing until the very end. Smart, edgy and filled with a cast creative characters, this book is one you won’t soon forget.

This book was told in 3 parts. I ripped through the first two parts but the last one dragged a little for me. The book was written so well and starred a smart, sassy and strong willed female character that was a bonus for me. The ending had me thinking back to several parts of the book and questioning what I thought I knew (which I loved.) overall a great fun, smart and entertaining read. All you see is not what you should believe. Great ending!

Believe Me. Claire is an actress, a struggling actress, trying to make ends meet. Claire finds work, but it is more than she has bargained for. Deceit, motivation, greed and murder and what ensues. I love JP Delaney's writing, as I was sucked in by The Girl Before, and I liked Believe me even more. One of my top reads of 2018 thus far!

This is another example of an author's first book being re-tooled in light of the 2nd book's success.  In this case, I liked Believe Me more than The Girl Before.  I thought the author's use of "movie scripts" throughout the book enhanced Claire's perspective.  The plot was taut and there were enough twists to keep me off balance and wondering what was real, which mirrored Claire's experiences.  There were a couple of throwaway moments that could have used a little more attention.  But all-in-all, I thought it was a really good book.  And it was definitely a unique entry in the psychological thriller genre.

First thriller I've read where Baudelaire figured prominently! Claire is a Brit struggling in New York. She's an actress who can't find work other than as a woman who dupes unsuspecting husbands for a law firm. Odd but interesting side gig. And then Stella happens- and Patrick. Did Patrick kill his wife? The police enlist Claire in a deception campaign because they believe he is actually a serial killer. And then there's a twist. And another twist. And another one. If there's a fault with this incredibly fast paced novel, it's that Delaney is weak on US law, law enforcement, and actually on NYC. Go with it. Ignore some of the plot holes and just turn the pages. Claire is not the most likable character in the world but I found her sympathetic; I liked that her story doesn't come out fully till the end. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This is an entertaining and highly readable thriller that will introduce you to beautiful poetry, albeit poetry used for evil.

A very twisted and complex thriller, Believe Me is definitely addictive! Admittedly, I didn’t love this book as much as The Girl Before Me.
Set in NYC, Claire, an actress, is struggling to make ends meet and signs on with a law firm to catch wandering husbands on camera to use as evidence against them.
But one particular job takes her on an unexpected and dangerous path.
A little choppy at times for me with the portions written in script format and a little dark and heavy on the Baudelaire, however, I stayed up until 2:00 AM to finish it!

This review was submitted in response to an ARC I received from NetGalley.

All you need to remember after you pick up this psychological thriller is that CLAIRE is an actress. From Britain, now in NYC, she can't work legally while taking acting classes at Actors Studio. So she needs a job that pays cash to supplement her scholarship. Claire explains that, as an orphan who was shuttled from place to place in foster care, she learned the art of "behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances." And, "It's what you imagine that defines you as a character."

So she gets a job acting as a decoy to tempt husbands to stray. She's very good at her role, but one night she is hired to lure the wrong man -- who is disinterested and preoccupied with his academic work -- the translation and teaching of the work of Charles Baudelaire. Patrick Folger is enamored of a particular book of Baudelaire's poetry, LES FLUERS DU MAL -- which happens to be morbid erotica after a fashion. When he departs without falling for Claire's enticements, she meets his wife, Stella, who had hired her through a law firm that Claire works for. Unfortunately, Stella ends up dead in her hotel room the next morning. Who killed her? Along with the murder, there is money missing. At first, Claire is a suspect, but then she is hired to pursue Patrick because the police believe he might have murdered his wife and that he is, in fact, a serial killer. There's the premise in a nutshell.

NO SPOILERS. Claire agrees to go undercover and assume the acting role of a lifetime. Be beware -- Claire is not entirely reliable as a narrator and the reader is never sure if she is being real or acting -- or even if Claire can tell the difference between the two.

The prose has an unusual style, written at times like a screenplay. While fitting for the subject matter, it was a little odd at first. The game of cat and mouse is such that, while you are drawn in with questions, you become less sure of what is going on as the book progresses. Definitely you will need to suspend disbelief as some of what happens seems completely unrealistic or likely to happen as described. I didn't really care for the ending and not sure that I really liked this book though it definitely held my interest well enough that I didn't want to put it down.

So, ultimately, should you read it? Depends on your BS meter and your ability to get into a character such as Claire. The details about Baudelaire and his poetry were quite interesting and macabre. I'd like to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this e-book ARC to read and review. Looking forward to hearing others' opinions and thoughts on this second novel that I've read by this author.

This was a quick read that had me hooked from the beginning. The book seemed to be heading in one direction and then surprised me a little with the direction it ended up going. There were twists and turns to the plot keeping you on your toes. I definitely recommend this book!

This is the second book I have read by that were written by J P Delaney. According to his Goodreads profile, he also writes, quite successfully, under the name of Tony Strong. One of his novels, under the name of Tony, was adapted into a television series.

I must say I liked the original way this was written. Since the main character is an aspiring actress, some of the book is written like a script; however, the book was too dark for me, and I did not care for the direction the book took. Because of how skillfully the author crafted this, I’m giving it 4 stars.

Claire is a struggling actor in New York, trying to make it work. After being excommunicated from Britain's acting world, Claire illegally comes to New York to pursue her dreams; however, while she is reaching for the stars, she ends up falling short of the success she aspires to have. Financially, Claire is at the end of the road, so she takes a gig at a firm for divorce attorneys. Claire plays the role of seductive decoy, capturing men in the act of cheating on their wives. Claire's role is vital in capturing these cheaters, but never necessarily gets her hands dirty. That is, until she is assigned a new client that turns up dead the next day. Prior to her client's death, her pursuit in capturing the client's death ends up falling short. Claire is sure this guy is an innocent man; a victim in her client's revenge attempt. Police believe that this man is dangerous, and after speaking with Claire, believe she is the best bet in the force's attempt to finally land a conviction. Claire goes undercover to try and seduce this man, giving her the guilty plea that the police is looking for—her best gig yet. Claire's manipulation skills are put to the test with this assignment, especially considering what's at stake. If this man is the evil mastermind that the police believe he is, will she be able to handle it?

I've never read anything by JP Delaney, but I heard that The Girl Before is an amazing novel, so I jumped at the chance to pick up Believe Me . I am so glad that I was given a chance to read and review Believe Me , because it's just so juicy. The writing is superb, the characters are multifaceted and intriguing, and the story is so original. Go into this story blind, because you will be surprised! The story is broken into three parts, with the first two being the stronger sections. Believe Me was almost a five star read for me, but the third part in this story really frustrated me. The story starts to have continuity issues in part three; allowing the plot to continue, but actually just confusing the heck out of the story. You'll question what's real and what's not, but not in the good mystery type of way. I think if the third section of the novel was retooled just a smidge, it would be a lot more robust and profound.

Overall, Believe Me is a tale you'll want to read if you're interested in something different in the thriller/suspense genre. The writing is spectacular and the characters are both likable, and deceiving. While it's not perfect, it's just the right flavor for what I needed this summer.

Thank you Netgalley and Quercus for my advanced e-copy in exchange for an honest review. Believe Me will be released July 24, 2018.

Claire is an actor looking for an acting job while simultaneously working for a law firm trying to entrap married men cheating on their wives. Everything was going good till one of her client gets killed.The cops seek Claire’s help to get a confession from the husband but Claire is not convinced of his guilt and finds herself falling for the enigmatic Professor.

Believe Me by J.P. Delaney is true to its name as it is very difficult to trust any character in this book. The story is filled with twists and turns with lots of lies and deception . A psychological mind game the book is half written in an interview type of way . Though the ending was a little disappointing and too unbelievable I still enjoyed reading this book especially for the different writing style .

I would like to thank Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine & NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest and fair review.

This and more reviews at https://chloesbooksblog.wordpress.com/

This was a twisty little tale! Every time I finally settled on a direction the plot was headed the story did an about face. It is really hard to determine which character(s) to root for, if any??

Because the main character, Claire, is an actress the story reads as a play in snippets. Some people found this off putting but I found it sort of clever. Claire was a great character which is funny because I bypassed this one for a while thinking I wouldn’t find reading about an actor interesting.

This story wasn’t at all what I was expecting and I mean that as a compliment. I didn’t read much going into it and was glad I didn’t. It was entertaining from start to end! Thanks NetGalley, the author, and Random House Publishing for a copy in exchange for an honest review.