What can I say about this book other than wow. It is not often that a book can pull the wool over my eyes but this book did that and then some. Thrilling is not a strong enough word for this it was a great read from first word to last. We meet Clair wright a kind of honey trap catching out married men . She is asked by Stella folger the wife of handsome, charismatic Patrick folger to catch him out. However later Stella is found dead the victim of a brutal murder. Then begins a twisty story of cat and mouse. I thought I had it worked out but then half way through the story takes a total 360 and it becomes a different tale, only for it to do another 360 in the final chapter. I don't want to give too many spoilers but I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes Hitchcock. I haven't read anything else by this author but on the strength of this I will be reading more in the future

I found this book irritating in the extreme and disliked the characters. I was determined to finish it but then rather wished I hadn’t bothered.

Claire is an actress who either becomes inadvertently or deliberately entangled in the pursuit of a serial killer - part of the fun is not knowing which it is. This started well and I was pretty gripped up until after the psychiatric centre. After that things got a little bit farcical as the twists started hairpin- bending back and forth somewhat erratically. I read it all n a day off work so it’s pretty easy to get through if you’re willing to suspend disbelief and go with the flow of the occasionally overwrought high jinks!

I'm probably the only person on the planet who hasn't read The Girl Before but off the back of Believe Me, i'll definitely be going back to read it. Anyway...

Believe Me was an insane, rollercoaster of a read with double bluffs and twists inside twists. It's 50 Shades of Grey meets Gone Girl meets - god I don't even know what else to compare this to, but as a thriller it's pretty unique.

Claire, an actress in New York can't get any work without a green card so she pays the bills by doing a little work as a honey trap for a big law firm. When her most recent target is arrested for murder, Claire gets the biggest acting job of her life. Is he a murderer? Is she? What's real, and what's method acting? With some creepy quotes from baudelaire, this book is definitely one for your suitcase this summer.

I definitely enjoyed it and couldn't put it down but there were perhaps one too many twists and double bluffs, despite the dramatic setting for the ending. Enjoyable but a little unfulfilling.

Thank you for netgalley and quercus for this e-ARC

WOW WOW WOW... What a Twist filled book... I just didn't want to put it down.

This is my first J P Delaney book and I was not disappointed at all.

Claire is a young British penniless actress living in New York, who wants to fully immerse herself in characters for film, television and Broadway, but that's not the acting that is paying her bills... limited on options due to having no Green Card, she's offered the role of a life-time that she simply can't refuse.
She's used to setting honey traps for cheating husbands but can she set one for a killer?

The plot twists leave you in suspense until the very end... it was mind blowing. It leaves you wondering what was real or who you could trust... I absolutely loved it!

Highly recommend to all Thrillers lovers.

It’s hard to know quite where to begin reviewing this book. It was a rollercoaster ride, for sure.

Claire, a young woman from the UK with a troubled past, is studying acting in New York (where they don’t teach you to act - they teach you to become). She’s an actress to her bones - everything is a performance for her - but without a green card she can’t legally work at anything, and day to day survival is tough. Claire makes a bit of money working as a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers - a “honey trap” assigned to test the willingness of a married man for a casual sexual encounter.

When one assignment ends in murder, Claire becomes drawn in to a situation where she will need all of her acting skills to survive. It seems someone is committing grisly murders, inspired by the dark poetry of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and Claire’s latest role is to get close to the main suspect...

Narrated by Claire, the reader is kept guessing throughout as to how much of that narrative is reliable. Claire’s an actress, after all. And the rug is pulled out from under the reader a number of times.

Believe Me is a very cleverly constructed story which kept me guessing - and, at times, utterly confused - throughout. It’s as much about method acting as it is about the murder plot, and the accounts of Claire’s classes at the Actors’ Studio add a fascinating dimension.

A gripping and thought provoking read.

Who do you believe? Is the protagonist Claire really working for the police to catch a killer or is she a vulnerable fantasist? Is the husband of the murdered woman she sets out to seduce really in love with her, or playing her?
This thriller is fast and the plot twists and turns.
This means it's always gripping even if the plot is rather far-fetched.
Delaney is a good story-teller, writing with intelligence.
Recommended.
This is my honest review of this book in return for a copy to read from the publisher.

I absolutely loved ‘The girl before’ so was very excited to read this and couldn’t download it quick enough...but, it just wasn’t as good - bizarre even, in places. It was a quick read and bearing in mind I haven’t picked up a thriller, or any book, for ages it was something I sped through but I was hoping for a lot more and it just didn’t deliver.

The premise of the book is an actor who has run away from troubles in the UK and seeking solice in the USA where she lands an undercover job that all goes pear-shaped. Or does it?

It’s a bit weird. There’s bits that just don’t add up, like the killer - really? That’s it? There was no build up and no explanation - big mistake for me, I felt. Some really far-fetched plots and it just wasn’t ‘real’ enough. I’d still read more from this author as I feel they really have talent but this wasn’t something that ticked all the boxes for me.

Claire Wright, 25, British, living in New York and training to be an actor. With money tight she takes on cash in hand assignments for a divorce lawyer – until the last case when the wife is murdered and Claire is attracted to the husband.
This is a twisted tale of Trust, Truth and Lies. I liked the way Claire talked to the reader and how everything slotted together eventually. The tangled web took rather a long time to unravel with some gruesome revelations along the way. Who do you believe?

This was quite a gripping thriller with lots of twists and turns that kept me going. It wasn't predictable and that makes it a cracker of a read.

♥I got an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley and this is my most honest uninfluenced review♥

Rating: 6 of 7; 5 of 5; 9 of 10

General view: Claire is a British actress with no greencard living in NY. She needs money and she can't work, so she starts to do jobs for ex-cop. All she has to do is get records of guys confessing cheating. And give them to their wives. One day, a wife appears dead and Claire is enlisted to help to get a confession from the victim's husband (the same husband she just failed to entrap!) who, incidentally, may be a serial killer. J.P. Delaney gives us an amazing ride, with so many twists and make we doubt of everything we thought we knew. And damn I love an unreliable narrator - yeah, you can't just believe Claire, there's too many things happening and you can't be sure what is real or not. It's beautiful.

Positives: great writing; I loved how sometimes we get scenes like a script, but not all the time; the characters are deep and complex and dark dark dark and oh so interesting; just unstoppable, you shouldn't pick it up if you'll need to put it down before the last page - trust me;

Ending: I can't put in words how I felt when everything was done. I honestly think that was one of the biggest twists I've ever seen. And dear lord, it was beautiful. I wouldn't dream of like half of it.

Tags: mystery-thriller, psychological-thrillers, thrillers-mystery-and-crime, unstoppable, can't-put-it-down

Quotes
‘And how was your night?’ Her voice is carefully neutral.
‘I looked for you about two, but you’d left.’
‘Oh, it was good.’ She sighs.
‘Bullshit, Claire. It was empty meaningless sex with a total stranger.’
‘That, too,’ I say lightly.
‘I worry about you sometimes.’
‘Why? I always carry a condom.’
‘I meant safe life. Not safe sex. As you very well know.’

‘That’s taking a pretty cynical view. Maybe those women wanted to be able to trust their partners.’
‘Then they should try trusting them. Not testing the relationship to destruction.’

"I’m just an actress. I wanted to stand on a stage and have people applaud. How did I get into this?"

"He’s studying me. Or is that just more paranoia?"

"But, equally, she might be lying to herself. Those are always the most interesting characters: the ones who deceive themselves. Because, sooner or later, the deception always falls apart."

I loved this book, I read it virtually in one sitting.... I found myself engrossed quickly into the storyline and needed to keep on reading.

Claire Wright likes to play other people.
A British drama student, in New York without a green card, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands.
When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she's being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer . . . Or the only decent husband she's ever met? And is there more to this set-up than she's being told?
And that's when Claire realises she's playing the deadliest role of her life .

What can I say.... even after reading the blurb and thinking that I knew what was happening….. I was wrong! It was a brilliant storyline and the twists and turns kept on coming. This is the first book that I have read from JP Delaney and it certainly won't be the last if they are all this good.

I love how you get to know and bond with the characters, the story really had me feeling for our main character Claire as she really has suffered knock-backs in the past throughout here career.

I don't want to give any spoilers away but I can honestly say that I loved the ending and I'm sure you will too!!

This book made me anti-social! I wanted to know what was happening in that place where the story was, so I ignored the real world and dived in, leaving behind all those who would engage me in conversation. This means that I also read it very quickly and finished it within a day of starting. There seems no point in telling you what the book is about, it is in the description and to expand on that would be to spoil the whole suspense of the tale for you when you read it yourself.
It is extremely well written in a first person format. Claire is reciting her words and thoughts for the reader, giving an insight into the world of an actress employed by the NYPD. There are also stage/script notes to provide clear direction for the reader, they do not intrude!
It is possible to guess what is going to happen, but again, the guess is wrong anyway. I thought I had an idea of what was going to happen at the end, I was kind of right, but not really! It is a good twister of an ending.
I liked Delaney's writing style, but then I picked this book to read because I had previously read "The Girl Before" and really enjoyed that also. I am happy to recommend this book, it will most likely appeal to people who like crime, thrillers, crime thrillers and readers who like a bit of a twist to feature all through a story.

Claire is an aspiring actor from England, in New York without a work permit. She is characterised as a somewhat amoral young woman, with a difficult past, who will do anything to get rent money. Patrick is a successful academic whose speciality is the poetry of Baudelaire. Patrick's wife has been murdered and both these characters may be suspects. The story alternates between suspicion falling on one or the other and the tensions of who is using who to get what they want.
I have mixed feelings about this book, a psychological thriller set in contemporary New York. On the one hand it is certainly a page turner and the author managed enough twists and turns in the plot to keep me speculating as a reader. However I did not feel any empathy for any of the characters and found the ending too neat. I felt that many aspects of the plot were not fully explained and I did not feel that the inserted stage locations worked well but rather, interrupted the reading process. This latter aspect may look different in the final print version of the book. Nor was I convinced by the use of extracts from Baudelaire that this was anywhere approaching a literary novel.
Claire is an aspiring actor from England, in New York without a work permit. She is characterised as a somewhat amoral young woman, with a difficult past, who will do anything to get rent money. Patrick is a successful academic whose speciality is the poetry of Baudelaire. Patrick's wife has been murdered and both these characters may be suspects. The story alternates between suspicion falling on one or the other and the tensions of who is using who to get what they want.
I understand that this novel is a rewrite of an earlier one by the same author but I would not be motivated to read that earlier version. I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

I started this book with interest and the interest never left me. It was gripping with lots of twists and turns.
The writing style was easy to follow and i loved the literary references, setting and characters.

Really enjoyed this book. It is so intense and twisted at points. Definitely kept me enthralled throughout as I tried to guess what would happen next - and failed every time! Perfectly created characters full of self obsession and paranoia. Excellent.

Okay, so I was torn with this book - whilst I was reading it, i found the twists a bit annoying, in the sense of - oh really? - but at the end, I thought - yes - great ending. I was worried that we were going into another "Fifty Shades of Gray" to begin with but thankfully it didn't go that way and overall, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it - clever writing, I think.

An intriguing read and just as enjoyable as The Girl Before. Quite a few twists in the tale and very creepy in parts but an easy read.

My word, what a book. Ive never read this genre before and boy i was not disappointed. Its a totally engrossing story. Just as you think you have got the measure of the story, you are thrown a twist or two or even three. You are certainly kept on the edge with this book. There are some quite descriptive and graphic scenes within the story but being a thriller, its to be expected. As a first time reader of this style of book, i was hooked from the start. Its an absolute compulsive read. Its a must read.

J P Delaney follows up her bestselling The Girl Before with this dark, and twisted psychological thriller set in New York with the starring role played by British actress, Claire Wright. Claire is attending a prestigious acting course that she came to NYC for. She is perennially short of money, behind in her rent money to Jess, whom she shares a Manhattan apartment with. Claire is forbidden to take up legitimate work as she lacks the green card to do so. She ends up working off the books, cash only for the law firm, Kerr and Adler, with their ex-cop investigator, Henry, filming married men coming on to her for their wives who have become suspicious of them. Every man falls for Claire until she meets Patrick Fogler, whose wife, Stella, she had met earlier. Academic Patrick Fogler is an expert on and obsessed with Charles Baudelaire, more specifically the poems within Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) with content that touches on the dark and unseemly side of sexual relationships. Patrick refuses Claire's open advances but later that night, Stella is found brutally murdered in her hotel room.

Claire loses her job, but is offered an opportunity to entrap Patrick by NYPD cop Frank Durban and Forensic Psychologist, Dr Kathryn Latham who believe Patrick is guilty of murdering his wife and 8 prostitutes that they know of in his life. Scenes of Claire in her acting classes demonstrate just how good an actress she is. She sees this as a role that offers her the opportunity to get the much desired green card, and besides she can do this. It's a job with different rules from the usual of being an actress, but it requires the same skills and the same process. However, nothing is as it seems, is Patrick the real target? For the reader it is like falling into a dark rabbit hole with Claire, the unreliable narrator, can she be trusted on anything? And what are the Baudelaire connections to Necropolis.com, an extreme BDSM site? Claire is falling in love with Patrick, willing to go wherever he leads, uncaring of how dark that territory may turn out to be, in fact, the darker and more dangerous, the better, all the time approaching all that she encounters with the line, what can I use from that?

Delaney writes a story with the kind of twists that make it difficult to predict where the novel will end up. It is beautifully written story, with Claire, a central character who is hard to get a grip on as we wonder if there is anything we can trust about her at all? At the same time, I find myself unable to trust Patrick at all. I can see this providing the requisitely compelling material for a film! This is an entertaining and thrilling read, albeit you do have to suspend your sense of disbelief at times. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.