Interesting twists and turns -- as there should be -- in this book. Don't think it'll be everybody's cup of thriller, but it is well written, the characters are intriguing, the story line compelling, and creepy to boot.

Possible spoilers below
5 stars for JP Delaney's "Believe Me" to be released July 2018.

This novel is the first I have read by this author, but it certainly will not be the last. This thriller had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish and keep me guessing until the very end. I usually am able to figure out what is going to happen, at least partially, in most thrillers like this one. However, literally every single guess of mine was wrong. Just when you think you know what is going on, Delaney completely shocks you! Amazing writing. There weren't any plot holes from what I can tell, since everything is tied up nicely by the end.

The premise of having a book told by an actor or actress in this case was so interesting. Actors, by definition, are professional liars, so we are left questioning if our narrator was reliable or not. I won't spoil anything, but I think you, too, will be wondering if Claire is who she says she is.

As far as "whodunit," I think all readers will be surprised. No spoilers here either, so I will only say, keep guessing!

This novel is probably my top 2 or 3 favorite thrillers for the year so far! Well done to JP Delaney. I cant wait to dig into your other novels.

This novel was given to me in exchange for my honest review.

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.-

Claire, an actress fallen from grace with a bad reputation – finally receives the role of a lifetime after months of unemployment. A role that will redefine everything she knows about acting and expose the deepest, darkest parts of her inner psyche. Claire is put in the crosshairs of a sadistic murderer after a night of playing private eye goes terribly wrong… or is she?

Believe Me makes you question everything. Every character has a motive, every scene has more than one perspective, there is not one part of this novel where you won’t be second-guessing everything laid out before you. I was biting my nails while reading this, slipping into the story so seamlessly that hours passed by without me noticing. The pacing and tension are so intense that I dare anyone reading it to NOT finish it in one sitting. Delaney redefines the term “unreliable narrator.”

Claire is a complicated protagonist, not easily construed and not always sympathetic. She plays every role – the hero, the villain, with such imperceptible ease it will leave you breathless trying to keep up. She is the perfect actress attempting to solve the perfect crime.

I started to lose track of how many twists and turns this book threw at me. Every time I thought I had a grasp on the plot and the characters, Delaney would throw yet another curveball at me, altering the course of the story yet again. Sometimes I struggled to wrap my mind around the ever-changing narrative direction. This is not a criticism. I enjoyed having to pause and drink in the scenes, parsing through each one with a scrupulous eye, attempting to piece together this sinister tale.

There is no doubt in my mind that this book will top the bestseller list this summer. It’s an excellent psychological thriller, standing out within a genre often overwrought with repetitive, cliché plots. Do yourself a favor and buy Believe Me when it hits the shelves, the only thing you might regret is how fast finish it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for allowing me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest 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.

3.75/5 stars.

Believe Me was my first experience with a J.P. Delaney novel, though I’ve had his first book sitting in my To-Be-Read stack for several months. However, reading Believe Me first was reassuring – I will definitely loop back around to reading his first novel.

Claire is a theater student in NYC who does some freelance – for lack of better term – acting on the side to help pay rent. One evening during work, she interacts with Stella Folger, very wealthy wife of Patrick Folger. Shortly following, Stella is dead – and NYPD is furiously working to establish who killed her. Claire quickly becomes entangled with the investigation, despite her wishes. At the same time, suspicion falls on Patrick, and the two are quickly thrown together in a race to prove who is innocent – and who is not.

The plot for Believe Me is sound – it is marketed as a thriller, and I think that’s an accurate description. That being said – there are some more controversial topics brought to light throughout the story, and that’s the truthful reasoning behind my rating. It isn’t a reflection on the novel’s plot, the writing, the character development (or lack thereof, in some cases), or the standard “twist” that every thriller seems to have these days. Rather – it just wasn’t necessarily subject matter I was incredibly interested in, or my usual genre. There are some spinoffs into darker worlds that even I – who usually reads just about anything – tend to try to avoid. That being said.. I do think this was a good read. It was quick, and I didn’t anticipate the ending unfolding in the way that it did. I applaud Delaney for taking some subjects that aren’t often discussed and bringing them into the open – unfortunately, they’re just not topics that spike a huge amount of interest for me personally.

I have somewhat mixed feelings for this book, ultimately. I really struggled between 3.5 and 4 stars, which is how I ended up where I did. It’s more than average (my usual 3 star) or even above average (my usual 3.5 star) but not quite great (my usual 4 star). The storyline is strong, the writing is good, and the ending is reasonably fulfilling. It didn’t captivate me, but it held enough interest. I can say that I would recommend this to others – but with a warning for graphic descriptions and some violence. Overall, it was an enjoyable read that filled up most of a flight from Spokane, WA to Chicago, IL – which I can always appreciate!

Special thanks to NetGalley & publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you are looking for a fast paced read with some unexpected twists and turns then this is your book.

Backdrop: A struggling British actress hops across the pond to America to escape some personal demons of her own and finds herself in a financial bind. To make ends meet she takes a job with a private investigator for wives willing to pay her to play the "role" of flirtatious barfly in order to lure philandering husbands into compromising situations. The story takes off when one such encounter ends in the murder of the wife of a wealthy target.

The book often switches from typical narrative to the use of screenplay structure to tell the story and for me this kept the pace flowing. The mixture of the protagonist's view of the world as a screenplay/role along with her own questionable mental state was a brilliant plot technique.

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.

Well-written and suspenseful. The cover fits the book perfectly. I never knew who was lying and who I could believe. There were real twists and turns. Often book covers promise those but seldom deliver. This book delivers. There's some creepy parts dealing with murder & sexual perversion so read at your own risk. It's not 'in-your-face' but still creepy.

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’m surprised the author was able to keep everything straight. The dialogue was off-putting at times. What a weird book!