Believe Me: A Novel

by JP Delaney

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

One out-of-work British actress pays the rent on her New York City apartment the only way she can: as a decoy for a detective agency, hired to entrap straying husbands. When the cops begin investigating one of her targets for murdering his wife--and potentially others--they ask her to lure the suspect into a confession.

But with the actress pretending to be someone she isn't, differentiating the decoy from the prey becomes impossible--and deadly.

• ISBN10: 0385691815
• ISBN13: 9780385691819
• Publish Date: 24 July 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Doubleday Canada
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780385691819

Reviews

[whisperingchapters]

Always amazed by Delaney's craft, writing, her brain that creates these twisted and enthralling stories that I can't get enough of. This was another win for me and a great start to 2019! I'm just blown away but every single detail of this book, especially once I reached the ending. It definitely fooled me to the very end. This is going on my fave reads of the year already!

[Leah]

Last year’s breakout author was, undoubtedly, JP Delaney, an anonymous pseudonym, with hit bestseller, The Girl Before. I personally couldn’t get into it, although I may go back and revisit it now that I’ve read Believe Me. However, I’m a firm believer in giving authors a second chance (and even third or fourth chances – sometimes, I never learn) and I really liked the premise of Believe Me, even more so when I realised a lot of it was script scenes, pretty much meaning this would be a fairly quick read regardless of whether I liked it or not. I’m pleased to say, this was actually a brilliant read.

I think what I liked about Believe Me is that I actually never knew where the plot was going – Claire is a very, very good actress and I couldn’t tell what was faked and what was real and so for a lot of the novel I wasn’t sure in the slightest of what was going on; even more so when the whole Patrick situation begins. Claire isn’t necessarily unreliable – if anything, I wanted to believe everything she was saying and I really liked her narration, but I just felt unsettled the entire time I was reading. I wasn’t sure, in the slightest, who had killed Patrick’s wife. Was it Claire? Patrick? A third party? It was so hard to pick either one because both had their times where I thought it was them and both had their times where I was sure they were both innocent.

I do wonder how believable the novel is as a whole – I mean, when you get to the end it’s a bit like WTF just happened, is that real kinda thing? But I cannot deny it was entertaining, I was thoroughly into this book throughout, the whole thing was crackers but a really entertaining crackers. It’s actually a re-write of an older novel of Delaney’s (published as Tony Strong) but you can see that the plot is so clever and unique. I gobbled it up.

I really loved Believe Me. The premise was unique and intriguing and the narrative and structure of the novel kept me hooked throughout. I really liked Claire, even if I didn’t trust her 100% and the ending was just spectacular. I thoroughly recommend this book and I can’t wait to go back and give The Girl Before another go because if it’s even slightly like Believe Me, it’s going to be amazing.

[kristy]

I received this ebook from the publisher for a review through Netgalley. This book was different then what I was expecting and different from a lot of the other suspense novels that I have been reading recently. I was able to predict who I thought was the murderer, but I enjoyed all of the different twists and turns that you had to get through to get there. I enjoyed the short chapters and it made it seem like I was flying through the book. I'm not really in to poetry and one of the major emphasis of the book revolving around poetry did get old to me after a while, but it stuck out because it was different then what I have been seeing in other novels. I have read this authors other novel, The Girl Before, and I would recommend both to other suspense readers