Monday, January 28, 2019

Believe Me

Title: Believe Me
Author: J.P. Delaney
Published: July 24th 2018 by Quercus
Format: eBook, 400 pages
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

If you are drawn to psychological thrillers that are a cat and mouse twist’em-up leaving you unsure of everyone and anything, then ‘Believe Me’ is the answer to your late night reading.

JP Delaney claims that ‘Believe Me’ was actually a first novel, but rewritten for a new release. In a way, I can see that since as they say an author spends a lifetime on their first book and six months on their second. That makes sense since this book is hands-down better than ‘The Girl Before’.

Claire Wright, a British actress living in the United States without a green card, finds it hard to get work on the stage. Unable to land the work that she loves, she takes on a side job working for a divorce firm setting up wayward husbands.

Claire becomes the suspect when a wife is found dead and the primary suspect is the man that had refused Claire in a bar. This is no ordinary man; he is a college professor specializing in Charles Baudelaire’s writings. Writings that have a very specialized following and which will lead Claire into a world that is both terrifying and mesmerizing. Convinced to go undercover, and playing the role of a lifetime to reveal the professor’s character and previous crimes, the table soon turns and it is Claire that is fighting for her life, her name, and even her sanity.

Told with screen narration, JP Delaney takes the reader through the harrowing mind of a sociopath, but there are parts that are so twisted that you lose track of who is the prey. There are parts intentionally left out in the telling of this story, and it is not until the end, when the reader realizes the full scope of this story, that the truth of who the unreliable narrator is trying to convince.

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