Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Review: Believe Me

Believe Me by J.P. Delaney

My rating: 4.5 Stars

As you get ready to read this book, be prepared for a wild ride! As a struggling actress, Claire really needs work. She is British and without a green card. As a result, work is very difficult to find, and she is barely without a lifeline. Claire has gone beyond acting in bit parts, although she is still enrolled in a prestigious acting school. At first she does the odd job for Henry, an in-house investigator at a law firm. However, she is almost without a place to live. But then, the timing couldn't be better as she is morphed into a role that will require more from her than any acting class could ever teach her. Her decoy work for Henry has now evolved to decoy work for the police.

Working for Henry, her job was to try and entrap cheating married men. One job fails, but it suddenly leads her to the police, or actually, leads the police to her. One of her women that hired Claire has been found murdered. The police suspect the husband, Patrick Fogler, of the murder. Claire is enlisted to try and entrap him, to lure him to a confession. A game of cat and mouse ensues, because - who is the decoy and who is the prey? Do the police actually think that Claire killed the woman?

What a different story. Parts of it are written as a script. How ingenious. This style of writing went a long way in keeping me guessing, literally right until the very end, especially because we were always in Claire's mind. This amazing book kept me bouncing my suspicion back and forth between Claire and Patrick. As far as I was concerned, either of them could have done it. Patrick had a few predilections that could easily make him guilty. Claire fit the profile perfectly too, as she carried a lot of secrets and rather peculiar behavior.

I could barely tear my eyes away from this book. Full of breakneck twists and turns, it was a dark, truly exciting page-turner, captivating from page one, all the way to an incredibly riveting conclusion. I literally held my breath as I read the final few pages. No way would I have ever in a million years suspected the conclusion. Part of me held a little bit of glee when I shut my Kindle off, and then next time I turned it back on this very book was being advertised. Good thing, because readers will want to grab this immediately and read it as soon as possible. JP Delaney is most certainly an author to watch.

Thank you to Ballantine Books and to NetGalley for this ARC to review in exchange for my honest opinion.
  

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