Cover Image: Believe Me

Believe Me

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I do not understand why this book is still listed for me I send my feedback three years ago. Sending this to remove,

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I am not leaving a review due to the fact that this book did not interest me enough to finish the story.

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I love anything by J P Delaney. It has been a while since I read this book but I really enjoyed reading about Claire and the men she had to gan their trust. I will continue to read ANYTHING by this author!

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Wow! So many twists and turns, I almost felt like I needed to write down notes to keep everything straight.

Kept me guessing till the end.

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Claire is struggling to become an actress. She is British and living in New York City without a green card. She takes a job with a divorce lawyer using her acting skills to trap cheating husbands. This novel takes a lot of twists and turns. Some of these are slightly hard to believe. If you're aren't too harsh with these slight exaggerations, it's an enjoyable read. It has a unique storyline and I would recommend it to other readers.

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Woah. I think Believe Me takes the cake for a cast of non reliable characters! I alternated between the audio and the book, and the audio had a whole new level to the book. It had background noises and you could tell the parts where the scene was really getting set. The ending felt a little rushed to me, but it really was a great ride throughout.

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Wow! Believe Me kept me guessing throughout the entire novel. Is Claire, the actress, innocent? Mentally unstable? In love with a serial killer? This book was impossible to put down, and I thoroughly enjoyed each twist.

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JP Delaney is very talented. After being delightfully surprised by The Girl Before, I will read anything she writes. That said, this wasn't my favorite of her books. I think I may have a bit of unreliable narrator fatigue. Also, Believe Me requires an absolute suspension of disbelief to enjoy the twists and reveals. I was confused a few times by the slightly convoluted plot. There was still a fair bit to enjoy, though. Claire is an interesting character, and Delaney has a real knack for keeping her readers on uneven footing. When you're in the proper mood, that can be an entertainment in itself.
3 stars

I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thank you to Ballantine Books and Netgalley.

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I just love JP Delaney! She sucks you right in from the beginning with this one.
You like the main character, at first.
Then, things shift.
Then, they shift back.
The other characters are well-drawn, not just caricatures. They seem like real people.
She also paints a very accurate picture of life in New York.
I love the title too!
Believe Me. When I read it now, I hear it in a begging voice. At the same time, I hear it in a super-confident woman's voice.
As with her other books, the author grabs you and then drags you along to the rattling conclusion.
Very believable.
Yes, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to friends.
I would give it 4-1/2 stars if I could.

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A taut and twisty thriller. With a classic unreliable narrator, you're tossed and turned every way as you figure out what's going on.... a great read!

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A good psychological thriller staring Claire as an actress trying to make it in the business. She takes jobs on the side as a decoy or plant for undercover detectives to mostly find cheating husbands. During one job, the wife of the cheating husband is murdered right after Claire saw her. Now, they want to recruite her to catch the husband or see if he will confess to her. Or is it the other way around? Is the husband playing Claire to get her to confess to the murder. A cat and mouse chase between the two and you can't figure out until the end if one is guilty and if one is playing the role of a plant.

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I thought I would love this book since it was J P Delaney and I wasn't disappointed. From the very first few pages I was sucked in and then I became confused, BUT the confusion made me want to read more and more.

The main character Claire is a struggling British actress who lives in NY (my hometown) and is illegal (no green card). She is a resourceful woman and actress and finds a way to work for a divorce lawyer as a decoy and all is going well until one of the wives she works for ends up dead. Some of the writing is so far fetched that you just need to go with the flow and make believe those things can happen. Totally recommend this book.

Thank you to Net Galley for allowing me to review

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One of JP Delaney's best! Claire is a struggling actor who gets the part of a lifetime when she is hired by a law firm to become a decoy in a divorce case, attempting to entrap husbands cheating on wives. When the wife of one of the husbands turned up dead, Claire becomes entangled in the story and their lives. Is the husband to blame? Is Claire? Twisty to the core, I loved the fast pace of this book! It kept me hooked until the very end and I wanted more. This author delivers on suspense, intrigue and unique plot twists. Can't wait to read more from this author!

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Drama student Claire Wright finds herself working for a divorce lawyer, entrapping cheating husbands in hotel bars. It pays the bills and she's good at the job, seeing her interactions as a script in her own mind. The whole thing is an easy performance, until she finds herself tangled up in a murder investigation and working with the police in an even more dangerous role.

One of the things I like most about JP Delaney is that the books are all so wildly different. This one plunges you into the world of Baudelaire's poetry. The plot gets weird, then it gets weirder, and eventually one of the twists near the end completely lost me...but it was an entertaining read.

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Claire Wright is the pure definition of a struggling actress. She is making ends meet by working for a legal firm luring husbands into compromising situations for their wives' lawyers. Then Claire meets the one man who does not fall for her trap, Patrick Folger. He just feels different to Claire. But when his wife shows up murdered the same night that Patrick did not fall for her trap, it is clear that there is more going on here than just a messy divorce. The police enlist Claire's help to flesh out the truth. And overnight, Claire has landed the role of a lifetime. Will she be able to make it through this production without blurring the lines between reality and fantasy?

Believe Me was an absolute roller coaster of a ride. It explored a poet that I knew nothing about, Charles Baudelaire. Someone referred to as the "Godfather of Goths." It sent me to "the Google" faster than any book that I have read recently. Claire comes across as a little immature and annoying. But then when she starts to fall for Patrick, it became very clear that she was not prepared for how deep this was going to go. For a while there, I thought that maybe Patrick was the upstanding guy that Claire thought he was. But then it became very clear that Claire was not a reliable narrator. I was absolutely surprised by the big reveal at the end. CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS. It is not often that a book can surprise me with the big reveal. Believe Me did just that.

Bottom Line - Believe Me is dark, edgy, and explores a twisted world that is unknown to most of us. It makes an absolutely fantastic thriller to read when you have a spare moment. Or are quarantined like most of the country.

Details:
Believe Me by JP Delaney
Pages: 352
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 7/24/2018
Buy it Here!
Thank you to NetGalley for the book in exchange for a review.

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It was similar to the previous book in terms of pace and tension. Not wildly compelling but entertaining.

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Occasionally I start a book and don’t like anything about it. Believe Me is one of those. I didn’t like the characters; I didn’t like the premise of the book; I didn’t like the story line; I didn’t like the scenarios. Although J P Delaney is a good writer and can tell a story, this story isn’t one I could get into or finish. The protagonist has no morals and it’s hard to like someone who is so disgusting. This book is one that I would not recommend because I can’t find one reason to like anything it.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a copy of this novel.

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Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Believe Me when I say this book is NOT believable. I had high hopes for this- the premise really intrigued me. A struggling actress making side cash by getting skeezy married men to go for her (all being recorded on camera) in order for the spouse (and the lawyer that hired her) to win in the divorce. Things get weird and someone ends up dead and that's where the book loses me. Everything that transpires just simply is not believable and you are left scratching your head about what you just read. This book is categorized as a psychological thriller- and psychological it sure was- I could not guess the true murderer. Seriously, for the whole novel any of the characters could have taken the blame and I would have believed it.
I don't know what to think of this. I give it a few stars because I did devour the book in matter of a couple of days, but this could have gone in a different direction and have turned out a much better book.

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This was an enjoyable read and quite twisty but I found myself wanting more from this book. The characters were well developed.

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Claire is a young Londoner in New York to pursue her acting dreams. In order for her to be able to afford her classes though, she sometimes does some “off the books” work with a law firm’s private detective, catching cheating husbands on video for those wives who are in doubt about their spouse’s faithfulness. One night Claire gets called to meet with the wife before her meeting with the suspected husband, and although it’s a bit strange, Claire goes along with the plan. The next day, that same wife is found murdered….and this is where the story just falls apart, at least for me. Lots of leads in this mystery that go nowhere, lots of scenarios where Claire suspects just about everyone, and lots of questionable leaps in the overall storyline. I was not a fan of this one.

Special Note: Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

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