In Believe Me, the story focuses on Claire’s character who is an actress studying in America from the UK. She’s offered a role as an undercover agent trying to get Patrick to admit he killed Stella. 
Claire is a struggling actor in need of money. Claire takes acting courses mastering her skills. Her job is to make others believe her act. 

The story started off interesting and I’m curious about the outcome, but something is lacking. I was following along with the slow pace storyline until the mention of this book Les Fleurs du Mal. The references from this book were confusing. Then the author included translations of Baudelaire’s poems which were boring. 

This story took an unconventional approach at solving a crime by hiring an actress to play many roles to earn the trust of one man who was thought to be the killer. Instead, I feel duped by the police investigation for the crime of Patrick’s wife. This method got carried away with explanations about this book and the poems that I began to lose interest. 
A psychological thriller shouldn’t be this confusing. I usually enjoy trying to solve the crime and studying the motives of characters, but this is layer after layer of mistrust. I struggled with its delivery. I had very little interest in Claire and Patrick’s character. Nothing worked for me. 

I was so drawn to the cover of this book. The cover and book description were so promising. Once Patrick’s character was introduced with his preachings about Baudelaire I started skimming.

I enjoyed Believe Me, yet at the same time it was more graphic than I expected. Another thriller by Delaney that is hard to put down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a digital galley of this novel.

Definitely a 4.5 read for me despite the graphic descriptions of the murder scenes left by a sexual serial killer. In all honesty, if you take away those brutal words you lose the entire purpose of the book but just be warned, if you feel you will be uncomfortable reading those descriptions you should give this book a miss.

This book, Believe Me, is a re-work of the novel The Decoy (published in 2001 by Tony Strong) while keeping the basic plot but making substantial changes. Believe Me is a psychological thriller that kept me off balance the entire way through. The main character is an actress and her ability to take on any role she chooses made me wonder exactly who Claire really was at any moment. When was she acting? What was Claire and what was her character? These were the same traits which made Claire so valuable to the police in their undercover operation. J. P. Delaney included a lot of acting lessons and techniques to show readers what a really good actress Claire was, he certainly convinced me. Another device to fill out the premise of an actor's life was in using dialog boxes; it is as if you are reading the script of a play. You will either like this technique or it will become bothersome but it is not used exclusively throughout the book. Because I believed the premise of Claire's abilities I lost my objectivity to tell whether she was acting a role or not. It was interesting but also somewhat disconcerting. I can certainly understand why readers might not finish reading the book. Luckily for me I pressed on and found myself surprised by multiple twists in the plot until I finally stopped trying to figure out how it was going to end. Then the ending turned out to be the least interesting part. Go figure.

I had enjoyed the Girl Before and eagerly awaited this novel. Sadly I was very disappointed. I found the main Character Claire, completely unlikeable and seriously messed up. I was trying to finish the book last night, all I could think was "omg, how much more of there is this?"

After a disastrous on set affair with her leading man, Claire is not exactly in high demand. She is in the country from England without a green card and no one to hire her as an actress.

When she is approached by a law firm who specialize in divorce to become a decoy, hired to find out if husbands are cheating or at least thinking about it. The job is fairly easy. Use your acting skills and tape everything but under no circumstances sleep with them or proposition them first. Just get the evidence and sneak out.

But when the wife of the target is violently killed in her hotel room, it seems the husband is a good candidate for murder. When they come to Claire with a plan to get him to confess and a part for her to play that earns actual money, Claire jumps in with both feet!

And this is where it all goes insane! Claire's mind is really a stage with her voicing all of the characters. Or are they real people? Who exactly is the bad guy here? Is she insane?

This was what I've come to expect from this author. The ultimate mental maze that leaves you exhausted and asking What???    Great Job.

Netgalley/ July 24th 2018 by Random House

Who is the real Claire Wright?

Who is the decoy, who is the player, who the heck committed murder? Wait what?!
Desperate for work , a green card, cash, and dare I say love some people will do just about anything but murder?

So we're told~ Let nature take it's course, don't entrap, don't coerce, don't be too pushy, just sit back and relax ... Ah the art of manipulation at its finest.

Well, there you have it ... this was the story of Claire who took a job as a decoy to catch the cheating spouses on tape with seductive propositions being extended.

In a million years she'd probably not expect to be paid such fine money but what happens when emotions run high and she begins to fall in love with one of the husbands or worse what if the husband is not at all interested. 

Claire promised never make the first move and of course make it clear that she's single and ready to mingle.

Ok, sounds good and I loved the premise in the beginning.

However, it went downhill midway when we brought in the french connection , the play, and White Venus with some Baudelaire thrown in for good measure.

I was lost when the french poems took over and the play with its production decided to enter the scene. It was odd yet felt forced and not connected to the rest of the story line.

This was a re-write having not performed well the first time with the writer using a pseudonym for this time around. I enjoyed "The Girl Before" but didn't care much for this one. 

Thank you to the author, Random House Publishing-Ballantine, NetGalley, and Aldiko for providing me this ARC copy in exchange for this honest review.

Years ago, an author wrote a book called The Decoy…it was published but nothing really happened. Later, after that author published a best-seller (The Girl Before), they re-wrote The Decoy and thanks to Random House-Ballantine and NetGalley, I received a copy in exchange for my honest review.

So, we meet Claire, a young British woman living in the U.S. without a green card, which limits her employability. She is an actress, and when she gets the opportunity for a fairly well-paying job that involves role-playing, she takes it. In this job, she works for a private detective on a cash basis as as a decoy, basically working to entrap men who cheat on their wives/partners.  She gets everything on tape when the man propositions her. She does this very well, until a wife who  is being cheated on is murdered, the police suspect the husband, and they basically put the screws to Claire (under threat of deportation) to help them get a confession from the man.

It sounded interesting, especially as I am a fan of psychological thrillers, and I enjoyed The Girl Before. But as this story goes along, it isn’t clear whether Claire is playing her role for the police extremely well, or maybe she is the one the police suspect of the murder and robbery of the wife, and the police are working to entrap her??

Parts of the book are presented as if it is a script, and there is a lot of literary pretension with quotes from Baudelaire dealing with his book on S&M poetry (S&M being part of the whole scene), and parts of it are fine. Maybe it is just me, but after awhile I really didn’t care what happened to Claire, who committed the murder, what happened to them, or if Claire was deported. No one was really likeable, and I just wanted it to be over with. My classic example is the way I felt when I saw the movie Raising Phoenix: I REALLY didn’t like it, but I just HAD to finish it to see what happened. I finished this book and struggled to decide how many stars, ending up with two.

J.P. Delaney is the pseudonym of Tony Strong, who wrote The Death Pit, Tell Me No Lies, and The Decoy (which was re-written and published as Believe Me) in the late 90s and early 00s. Not my thing.

I did not like this author's first book, but this one blew me away. Claire gives her performance of a lifetime. I was hooked from the beginning and was surprised by every turn this thriller took. Could not put it down.

I enjoyed the writing style of this book, it was as if parts were being performed as a play. 
A young British actor with a stained past is trying to start again in America without a Green Card. Unfortunately she is having trouble finding acting jobs.  She has been “acting” as a flirtatious woman to see if suspected husbands are faithful, which brings in her paycheck. Things twist when there is a murder. 

The author could paint a great narrative at times, but other times the story was uncomfortable to read, It just wasn’t the book for me. 

Thanks to #NetGalley for a copy for my honest review

I guess the combination of BDSM, Baudelaire’s S&M poetry and gore just proved too much for me in Believe Me, and I’ve put it down at around 50% of the way through.  I just can’t force myself to continue.  If the plot were more coherent, and the characters more likable and believable, I might just have managed getting to the end.  Alas, it is a DNF for me.

I will say that I thought the use of viewing scenes as though staging a play was quite interesting.  As an actress, Claire sees things framed to her experience and also tries to figure out how to use it in her career, which seems a valid point of view to me and not a style I’ve seen before.  

Thanks to NetGallery, the publisher and author for allowing me to receive an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and JP Delaney for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.  I have mixed feelings about Believe Me, but overall I enjoyed the story.  It is about Claire, a struggling actress from the UK who is living in the United States but does not have a green card.  She is working for an agency trying to entrap men who are cheating on their husbands, but then the wife of one of her "marks" turns up dead and she has to go undercover to try to find the actual killer - or was she the actual killer?  There were a lot of twists and turns and I did enjoy the ending.  However, I personally did not like the plot device of the "scenes" - just felt weird to me.  Overall, I enjoyed this book.

3 stars
Review by Nancy
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog

Believe Me by J.P. Delaney was deviant and complex. A thriller with a lot of twists and turns. 

Claire is a struggling actress looking for a job, limited due to her immigration status. When the opportunity for a cash paying job arises, she takes it. She is a decoy for a group of divorce attorneys, her job is to entice married men into cheating on their spouse, to prove that they are in fact cheaters. When the wife of a suspected cheating husband turns up dead, she is given the opportunity to help the police capture the murderer. In exchange for a green card, she is to go undercover and find out if the husband was indeed the one to commit the crime. 

Claire was out to do a job, but in the process started having feelings for Patrick, who is believed to be the murderer, or at least that was my take on it. Claire could have been acting the entire time and it just seemed like her feelings were real, but it could have all been a lie. Although the point was to find the murderer, you get sidetracked by the relationship that starts up between Claire and Patrick. It is interesting to say the least. 

This book was full of twists and turns, at times it was a little hard to follow. It was deceiving until the very last page. As a reader you don’t know what is real, and what is not. I feel like it ended and we still didn’t get any real answers. Definitely not the ending I was expecting, nonetheless J.P. Delaney delivered a well written suspenseful thriller. 

**ARC provided by author for honest review**

Like his prior release "The Girl Before", this novel is a wild ride of twists and turns. One minute you despise our main character Claire, then you pity her, then you root for her, and back and forth it goes. The characters are almost too complex, and sometimes re-reading a passage or two is necessary, but in a weird way...it works! I could not put it down, and am so glad I didn't. It may not be everyone's sort of book, but it is definitely a deep, dark, thinker of a thriller where you are never quite sure who the bad guy is, and maybe they are all bad in their own way. It points out the possibility of the darkness within all of us.

HOLY COW! I absolutely loved Believe Me. A twisty thriller, that will get into your head and have you constantly questioning what is real, and what is acting. I would say up until the 50/60% mark this was a solid 5 stars for me. It did start to let up a little at that point, and I felt some things were not fully explained or gave reason, but it quickly pulled me right back in. I don't want to give specifics away, because I went in blind and I think that's how to go into this one. I didn't read The Girl Before, but I will be RUNNING out to grab it, hoping for the same thrill! Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for my copy. I read a lot of thrillers, but this quickly climbed into my favorites.

the book was very interesting.  Plot was well developed. really enjoyed this book and the characters.

I don't believe in giving negative feedback for a book I received free, but this will be an exception.  Not only does this have to be the weirdest story I've ever read  but, also, one of the most disgusting!  I'm afraid I cannot recommend it!

After reading a few uninspiring thrillers, this novel was exactly what I needed. It was great fun! Lots of plot twists, action, romance, and always guessing to the very end. This was a page turner and I loved getting to know the inner workings of our unreliable narrator. Highly recommend!

Staying true to her writing form in The Girl Before - Delaney delivers another rollercoaster of a psychological suspense novel.. Thanks for another great book!

A 5/5 for JP Delaney and "Believe Me" 
When you thought it couldn't get any better than his huge blockbuster hit "The Girl Before"

Tantalizing 
Addictive
Surprising 
A true page turner
BOTH BELIEVABLE AND UNBELIEVABLE
Just when you think you know, think again...

Claire is an actress in her own league, mask on or off you never truly know... To some she may just be a struggling British woman doing what she needs to get by in America's own New York City, while others might think she's a wolf in sheepskin. The married men she puts in a psychological headlock might be her victims, or are they? 
There are several key players in this game of cat and dog, (mouse is surely too fragile for this one)- 
Murderer, Suspect, and Victim... OR Wife, Husband, and Decoy. 
Two bloody truths, one lie. 
This book will have you questioning everything you THINK you know about the people around you, yes, even your loved ones. 
Ask yourself this one question... Would you want to know the dirty truth even if it meant never going back again? 
Or actually, just leave the dirty work to Claire, she'll ask you herself. 


I want to say thank you to Random House Publishing Group for this priceless early copy of the highly anticipated "believe me" and of course JP Delaney for always creating books I can get lost in and curl up with. 

This review will be located on netgalley & goodreads May 21st, also Amazon when Believe Me is released to the public and review's are enabled.

Overall, this book was a very quick read with a lot of twists and turns throughout. However, I felt like it was just all over the place. There were so many twists and turns that it started to distract from the story. I had really high hopes during the first quarter or so of the book, but then the story started to derail. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.