Believe Me by J.P. Delaney–Review

Summary: In this twisty psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Before, an actress plays both sides of a murder investigation.

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. The rules? Never hit on the mark directly. Make it clear you’re available, but he has to proposition you, not the other way around. The firm is after evidence, not coercion. The innocent have nothing to hide.

Then the game changes.

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.

Claire can do this. She’s brilliant at assuming a voice and an identity. For a woman who’s mastered the art of manipulation, how difficult could it be to tempt a killer into a trap? But who is the decoy . . . and who is the prey?

Review: 4 1/2 stars

Believe Me is one of those books that I requested purely because of the hype it’s received from other reviewer friends of mine. It was getting a lot of buzz, so I expected it to be pretty good. I did not expect it to grip me by the end of the first chapter, but it did. This book is a perfect example of a strong opening. But once this book took off, it never let back up. I would advise you to wait to start this one until you have the time to devour it, because it is hard to put back down. 

Believe Me was so different for me because a lot of the time I didn’t know what to believe. I found myself suspicious that every character at different points throughout the book. It was an incredible mystery ride based on that fact alone. I couldn’t tell what were lies and what was the truth. I loved it because it kept me guessing the entire time.

The characters were done really well especially Claire and Patrick. But every character in this book was done really well. The development is thorough, but without unnecessary details. I also found Claire to be intriguing from the very first chapter. She was mysterious and bold, but also impulsive. I liked her character right away. She was just so interesting.

I am kind of shocked at how J.P. Delaney pulled this book off. It certainly lived up to the title because, honestly, I never knew what to believe. But it is also a little difficult for me to review because I don’t want to spoil anything. The plot was incredible and the twists came out of nowhere, but were clearly planned well. In the interest of keeping this review spoiler free I will keep it short and leave you with this, give it a chapter before you decide to pass on this one. I was going to read this later, but after reading the first chapter I wound up reading the whole thing.

“He describes a menagerie, a zoo filled with every kind of vice. And he poses a riddle: Who is the monster even worse than these? The answer is you, the reader, who can enjoy the horrors in his poems without having to bloody your own hands.”