Thanks to the publisher, Random House, via NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

After reading The Girl Before by J. P. Delaney, I felt sure I'd enjoy Believe Me. I did not enjoy it very much. It was hard for me to follow at times and the constant references to Charles Baudelaire's book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal, slowed the pace of the book. Sometimes I felt this novel was drowning in twisty details. Since I was't expecting the erotic sex scenes and references, it would have been nice to be forewarned about them.

The protagonist, Claire, was messed up mentally, was promiscuous, in the U.S. illegally, would do anything to earn money, and used her acting abilities to make you wonder if she was for real or was she acting. Her backstory was interesting but didn't help to make me like her and I didn't care for any of the other characters either.

The ending was absurd. It added nothing to the story and made the rest of the book hard to believe.

Thank you to Netgalley & Doubleday for the ARC! I loved this one! This book was weird, insane and totally crazy. It had a vintage Hollywood vibe and was difficult to read at first because some of it was written like a play, but eventually, once you are sucked in and totally engrossed, you can’t imagine it being written any other way, it flows like a 1940s detective film. I was very worried I would be disappointed by this because I loved The Girl Before, but this novel did not disappoint. I honestly found myself questioning the sanity of the narrator, and even questing my own judgment. Overall, absolutely would recommend.

Expected Publication: July 24!

J.P. Delaney strikes again! I ran across this author several months ago when perusing audiobooks to listen to from the library. His previous novel, The Girl Before, was dynamite. My review of it here:

https://homesweethouser.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/the-girl-before-by-j-p-delaney/

So imagine my excitement when Believe Me came up as an option to request from NetGalley, and a couple days later I was approved to receive an advanced copy by the publisher.

The first thing that struck me was the way in which the story was written. In addition to traditional story writing and sentence structure, parts of the book were written as the script of a play and others were delivered via poetry. It made for really interesting transitions and kept me engaged throughout.

I'm not even sure that I could write a quick synopsis that would do this book justice. Believe Me is about an aspiring English actress, Claire, who finds herself in America, struggling to make ends meet in the Big Apple. Without a green card, she finds work difficult to acquire and soon ends up working for a private investigator of sorts, hired by suspicious wives to "perform" as a prostitute and see if their husbands will take the bait. However, things don't exactly go as planned when one of the wives is found murdered in a hotel suite, and her husband becomes the prime suspect. Claire will be hired for her biggest performance yet... seducing the husband and getting him to confess.

There are so many twists and turns in this novel that I never knew what was going to happen next. J.P. Delaney also did a great job of throwing just enough curve balls in that I found myself second guessing all of my intuitions. Just when I thought I knew what was going on, I started to doubt myself and think, "hmm.... maybe not..." I thought the ending was going to be an absolute let down, but I was caught completely off guard and loved it!

This book will make you question whether we are ever truly ourselves, or if we are just actors in the play that is our lives.

Highly recommended. And if you haven't, check out The Girl Before as well. They are both superb.

-I received this advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, J.P. Delaney, and Random House Publishing's Ballantine Books for the opportunity to review.-

I received this title as a ARC from NetGalley and Random House.

A great thriller where you'll always be wondering where the acting ends and the real people begin. Claire, a struggling actress, hired to "act" the part of a woman interested in married men, generally hired by their wives, hoping to catch them in the act. She is British, trying to stay in the US, and needs money and a green card. She works for a lawyer who gets hired by wives trying to see if their husbands are being faithful, then one job goes wrong. What is real and what is acting?

Several twists and turns. Not for the faint of heart. Excellent read.

I haven't read J.P. Delaney's first book, The Girl Before, but once I saw this cover, I had to have this book! I went into this book completely blind. I think that was a good thing on my part. After finishing this, I read the blurb and realized that I would have been completely let down if I would have read the blurb from the start.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot because I do think it's best to go in blind. We follow Claire, who is a British actress trying to make it in New York. She doesn't have a green card so she doesn't really have much choice in what she can do for work. She starts working for a divorce attorney and she is used as a decoy to trap cheating husbands. One of the husband's she tries to trap, his wife is found murdered. And so, begins our story of the cat and mouse game.

Most of this book is written like a script, to be kept with Claire being an actress, which I found to be quite interesting. I didn't like any of the characters and none of them had any redeeming qualities. I was immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading till about 60% in. The first 60% of this book was a 5 star read for me. However, it started going downhill shortly after. I didn't feel connected to the characters, the chemistry between the characters was lacking for me and I had to skip over parts that focused on Charles Baudelaire's book 'Les Fleurs du Mal.' The last 40% got to be real boring.

I didn't see the first twist coming and enjoyed it! Every twist after that, I felt was written just 'to surprise the audience.' There's an unreliable narrator and you won't know what is real or what is not real, and that is a creepy feeling but I love that feeling! If you love books that will keep you guessing and make you believe in things that aren't real, then read this book!

Thank you to Random House Publishing - Ballentine and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I find this book slightly above average. I wish I liked it more for some reason I just didn't like the main character.

A twisted psychological tale is one thing ,but this is so convoluted that it is impossible to make sense out of the story. I finished it and that I felt was an accomplishment in itself. Would not recommend this book.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this ARC of Believe Me by JP Delaney.

Claire is a British actress, working in America, and struggling. She's not making enough to pay the rent, her temper keeps her from keeping a job, and she works for less than savory people in order to scrape by.

But then she gets an opportunity to work with the police to catch a handsome and charming psychopath who allegedly killed his wife, and it we plummet down a rabbit hole of deceit, lies, and love. Did he do it? Did SHE do it? Who is lying, who is genuine?

This book. Starts out strong, super intriguing, and then things flip and suddenly slow down a lot. It felt convoluted and disjointed, but keep going! It really does make sense at the end, which is why I gave this four stars instead of three. I really liked the ending, which for me, makes a huge difference.

Thrillers for me tend to be a bit formulaic but that is part of their appeal. I want to see who can make the formula feel fresh and new OR take it somewhere that makes me think WOW they mixed that up in a good way.

Believe Me definitely has some faults in a LOT crammed into the book where I feel it could have been a bit longer to help make more sense or a few things taken out but where I was expecting XYZ JP Delaney gave me QRS,.

Claire certainly makes you wonder...I had to scroll back a few times and go wait I thought...only to find what I thought was well not right.

Definitely a fun, want to keep reading to find out what happened Summer Thriller!

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC!

I honestly don't know how I feel about this book. The story sucked me right in and held my interest. It was well-written, but I can't help but be thrown by the ending. Why did it end like that? Why weren't we introduced to the killer of her co-star earlier in the book? Did the "killer" even do it, or was Stella's killer responsible for both? I'm unsettled by it, and it really is negatively affecting my rating. My 3.5 stars is deserved, but I wish the ending was less convoluted so that it could be higher.

Sadly, this was a disappointment. I did not feel any connection to the characters, and was confused by what was really going on in the story and what was going on in Claire's head. Maybe that was the point, but for me it made for a twisty story that didn't really capture my attention. I kept reading just to finish and move on.

I enjoyed the book, but there were parts that were too fast and other parts that were too fast. It was enjoyable and hooked me, but there was something with it that had me stalled on reading it on multiple occasions.

I liked the mind games that were put on me as a reader. I will recommend to my friends, but it's too complicated (emotions, sex fantasies, etc) to give my high school students.

I do admit this book has a lot of twist and turns. Sadly, they just aren't very believable. The main character is very unlikeable...to the point where you don't care what befalls her in the end.

In order to try and trick the reader they make Claire a very unstable narrator. We only ever see things from her point of view. At times, when she is playing her part...it reads as if it is real.

Overall, the book is a quick beach read.

I was completely immersed in the story line. The twists and turns were non stop all the way through the end of the book. I never knew what to believe or who to believe. Great read!

View my review on goodreads.com

I was given an advanced copy of this title in exchange for an honest review. This book was so very well written. It captivated me the entire time!

When I read the description for this book I was intrigued with the premise. Claire is a British actress who is unable to get work in England for reasons made apparent pretty early in the book. She is also unable to work legally in the US because she doesn't have a green card. So, to make ends meet, she works for a PI company as a "honey trapper" where she attempts to make cheating men hit on her while she secretly records their interactions to give to their suspecting partners. When one of the women she was hired by is found dead, in a very gruesome manner, she becomes a suspect, but not the prime suspect. As you might have guessed that honor belongs to the husband, who just so happened to resist Claire's trap and walk away from her that same night. The police decide to use Claire and her acting talents to continue the trap, but this time for murder not adultery.

The story progresses quickly, mainly focusing on the case as it is unfolding, but is interspersed with Claire in an acting class, which is the reason she is in the US to begin with, and her own "thoughts". Her thoughts are presented to the readers as if she were writing her own screenplay and while I understand why the author chose to present them in this way, so that you could see that Claire becomes very deep into character while she is acting, I don't think I liked it so much. Something it does well is present the reader with doubt about the truthfulness of the narrator, but I think she was fairly unreliable without it.

My biggest problem with the book was that there was a lot going on, I mean A LOT. Without going into too many details, I think that the initial plot of the book was essentially lost with everything else going on. The ending, when the murder is finally solved, came after so much other "story" that it was, in my opinion, kind of a throwaway. There was of course a twist at the end of the book and I think that was more intriguing, not much but more, than the actual solving of the murder and since I was intrigued by the initial murder plot, I was disappointed.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

I really liked this book from the very beginning. With all the twists and turns it keeps you reading and trying to guess what’s going to happen next . Overall I would definitely recommend this book and this author to others . A good author that can keep me reading into the night is a keeper in my book.

I loved this book! I read "The Girl Before" and enjoyed it, but "Believe Me" kept me on the edge of my seat. I would love to see a sequel to it. The story had many twists and turns and kept you guessing as to who the real bad guy was the entire time. I did not figure it before it was revealed in the book, which is rare for me. I would highly recommend this to anyone that likes a good thriller!

I like JP Delaney's writing and creativity. The first book I read by him, I was so engrossed and needed to know how it was going to end. Love that feeling when I'm reading. This book was just as good.

good book full of suspense and plot turn would recommend to other reader great new author would read more form the author