Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions presented are my own. This was a 3.5 stars for me, but I always round up. I detract one star because I thought this tale of suspense took too many twists and turns, but everything was neatly wrapped up at the end.

I enjoyed the duality of this story and the way it mirrored the history and prose surrounding Charles Baudelaire, the French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. Baudelaire's most famous work is a book of poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), provides the thematic backdrop with a case study on a psychopath mixed in.

This book will definitely hold the reader's interest and drive a need to finish the book in limited sittings.

I'm sad to say this book was disappointing for me. To be fair, it was certainly interesting and I was really hooked through a little more than half of the book---but then it got a little too out there for me. It went from somewhat believable to way over the top and left WAY too many questions unanswered. I hated the ending. The beginning was so exciting trying to figure out what was going on and who the culprit was....then it fell apart. A truly great idea - but just didn't stay together;-(

Claire is an actress from England that ran away to New York to start her career over as she made some really bad decisions in England. She isn't finding work in New York either because she doesn't have her green card. She hooks up with a private investigator doing work by trapping cheating husbands. One of the clients ends up dead and Claire and the clients husband are the main suspects. The book was awful. I didn't care for it at all. It was jumpy and it just repeated it self. There was a quick twist that I saw coming a mile away but then there was another twist that I didn't see coming. This book was a rewrite of a book this author wrote years ago but rewrote it because of the success of another book that was written.

Received this book as an ARC for my honest review.

The writing style of this novel was very confusing until I understood the plot of this book. The twists and turns, keeps everyone pulling the string to find out who the murderer really is. Amazingly written and will definitely keep reading JP Delaney's books.

A twisty psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator and a shocking twist. Delaney does an excellent job making the reader feel just as unstable and unsure of reality as the characters.

Claire becomes entangled in a scheme to lure cheating husbands in Believe Me by JP Delaney. When the wife of one of the men that Claire is trying to persuade is murdered, the husband is the first suspect, as usual, but not Claire must try and get him to confess, did he really do it? Can Claire get the answers the police need?

Claire is an actress who is in desperate need of a green card and money so that she can continue to live in the United States, so she decides that it will be worth her while to team up with a private investigator to trap cheating husbands, but she may have more to lose than just time and freedom, this dark psychological thriller is a slow burn, in the beginning you're left wanting more, and as the story progresses it gets better, the characters become real, and the story is very scary and very real.

The premise of this book is really interesting, and the twist, though predictable for me, will possibly get a lot of people, I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't something I want to run out and buy a copy of right now. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

LOOOVED this book!! It starts off fast and just takes off. I didn't want to put it down and ending just blew my mind. Highly recommend this book!

This book started out as a slow burn, picked up a 1/3 of the way in, But lost me again the rest of the way.
this book was just another run of the mill thriller,

cw slut shaming, gore, CSA, self-harm, abuse

→ What I Liked:

The Twists
While I’m not one of those people who can guess the ending to every mystery, I can sometimes be hard to please with twists. I like them to be somewhat believable, meaning that there needs to have been an indication somewhere that this was a possibility. Not necessarily anything glaring, just something to point back to as a foundation. This was actually one of my biggest issues with Dangerous Girls. While the very last bit of the book is so full of twists it’s messy, JP Delaney masterfully puts together most of the pieces in such a way that the reader can’t help but be impressed. I really thought I knew where this book was going at the beginning, but I was very wrong.

The Characters
Claire, our narrator, is a British actor living in NYC. It’s clear from the start that although she’s down on her luck, she’s just brimming with talent. She’s easy to sympathize with, but far from perfect. Although she has somewhat of a stereotypical background, in my opinion she was quite an original character. Patrick, the man accused of murdering his wife, felt really well-done as well. While at first the reader thinks they have him pinned down, that soon comes undone. Seeing him through Claire’s eyes, we find out just how difficult it is to discern who someone truly is.

→ What I Didn’t Like:

The Ending
I tore through the entirety of this book, loving the build-up, but felt entirely dissatisfied by the ending. The author threw in so many red herrings I could barely see straight. Everything began shifting wildly and rather than astounding me, it caused me to lose any suspension of disbelief I had. It felt cheesy and cheap and I’m positive JP Delaney had the talent to create something better than this.

→ TL;DR:
Great twists
Page-turner
Believable characters
A terrible ending
Would recommend

Believe Me has a few twists and turns I didn't see co ing. Not your typical cat and mouse mystery. I recommend this book.

This may be even better than her first book. In this, Claire is an actress and in order to pay for her acting lessons, she teams up the a PI to snare cheating husbands. This eventually leads to her involvement in a murder investigation. A literature professor, whose specialty is Baudelaire, is suspected of having killed his wife and possibly many other women, with a theme tied to Les Fleurs du Mal. The poems were considered pornographic when they were first published and Baudelaire was actually prosecuted because of them. It's a really interesting back story and the novel itself is quite gripping. Imagine if you wrote something and it lead to another using it as an inspiration to murder people? Would you still write the book? Would you publish it? Those are some of the questions posed in this psychological thriller. I definitely recommend it.

I enjoyed the first part of the book but felt like it was losing me in the middle but then it caught me back in for the last third of the book. It was definately filled with twists and I have to say the last one was great..didn't see it coming!
#BelieveMe #Netgalley

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book.
A little dark, filled with twists and turns which keep the reader totally unbalanced, this is a book that I loved and I hated. So many strange things happen. I enjoyed it more than the Girl Before and learning that the author is male explained a lot about both books. I don't resonate with his female characters probably because they are not realistic. Read the book. 4 stars because it keeps you on your toes.

I absolutely loved this book. I loved The Girl Before and I knew that I was going to enjoy this one just by the description. I loved the twists and the MC was 3 dimensional and well done.

The main character of this book was too one dimensional. I lost interest early in the story and didn’t finish it.

After reading J.P. Delaney’s book, The Girl Before, I was eager to read this book. Although I was lucky to get an advanced reader copy from NetGalley and Ballentine books, I wasn’t able to get to it before the release date. The audiobook became available about the time I was ready for another book for the car, so I ended up getting the audiobook and listened to it rather than actually reading it. The audiobook was produced a little differently than others I have listened to. It was narrated by the main character, but would periodically revert to a scene that had sound effects and sounded like a radio broadcast. I gather that the book was written somewhat like a screenplay because many of these scenes started with the word “Interior” which is why it was probably produced in this manner.

Claire is an actress living in the US without a green card. Apparently, she has had difficulties in the past and came to the US to start anew. She is having trouble finding work because of her past reputation, but an attorney is willing to hire her to act as a decoy in some undercover investigative work. The attorney often represented wives who suspected their husbands of possibly cheating, and he would use Claire to see if the men would approach her for a liaison. All was going well until one evening the husband didn’t succumb to the bait, and the wife ended up dead that night. Claire is called in by the police for questioning, and the attorney refuses to hire her again. The police are desperate to catch the killer and have reason to believe the husband did it. In a desperate attempt to capture him, they recruit Claire to use her acting skills to help lure him to a confession. As the story unfolds, it becomes unclear who is telling the truth and who can be trusted.

This one didn’t capture my attention like The Girl Before. I think I was thrown off a little in the beginning by the switching to the radio-like production which sort of interrupted the flow for me. The other reason I wasn’t engrossed in this one is that I often just felt it was a little too unrealistic for me to buy into. The book did keep me guessing as to who was believable, but it also turned out that my gut feeling was correct. I have a feeling I would have liked this one better if I had just read it rather than listened to it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballentine books for the advanced reader’s copy.

Believe Me was a roller coaster of a story. If you didn't get whiplash, did you even read this book??? The entire thing was pretty much plot twist after plot twist. (Which I liked, even if some of it was doing too much.) You think you have something figured out, but then you turn the page and J.P. Delaney's probably like: 😏

This was an intense, creepy, and dark read—definitely my kind of thing. Side note, and irrelevant to my mini review but something I still wanted to share: I felt personally offended because the main character called Elf a "terrible movie." Okay Claire, sure.

2.5 Stars

J.P. Delaney's first novel was the first book i got approved for on Netgalley and i really enjoyed it. This made me very excited to read Believe Me. I went into this completely blind. This is a twisted mind blowing story, constantly changing, extremely unreliable narrator. Every time you think you have the main character figured out something changes. I personally enjoy an unreliable character, it can make a book more interesting. For some reason this time around it did not work for me. I have found this too hard to keep up with and too often changing that i wanted to stop many times, but i did pull through and it was a surprising ending. One last big twist. I am glad that i completed it but in the end i just dont think this was for me.

I don't know where to start on this book. First of all thank you netgalley for an ARC of this book. JP Delaney is a real talented writer. This book has all the elements of a mystery book. Highly recommend it.

-A struggling actor, a Brit in America without a green card, Claire needs work and money to survive. Then she gets both. But nothing like she expected. Claire agrees to become a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. Hired to entrap straying husbands, she must catch them on tape with their seductive propositions.
When the wife of one of Claire’s targets is violently murdered, the cops are sure the husband is to blame. Desperate to catch him before he kills again, they enlist Claire to lure him into a confession.-

There were plenty of twists and turns throughout the story - who' s being played, and who's the innocent party (if there is one). Claire is a deft manipulator, but maybe Patrick is even better. I though the story moved along quickly, and kept me guessing.
I will look for more from this author, the writing was well done with a nice pace.

I received an ARC from NetGalley, and am providing my honest opinion.