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Believe Me by J.P. Delaney

 I noticed when I added Believe Me by J.P. Delaney to my currently reading shelf on Goodreads that it had a rating of 3.68. In the past, a lower score like this led me to shy away from a book unless I really wanted to read it, but I have learned that while I sometimes agree with other readers, there are often times that I just don't, and this ended up being one of them.

The book opens with a scene, as it might be written in a movie script or play. This made me a bit nervous, but I quickly realized the whole book was not written in this style, and I was intrigued from the first pages. 

Claire is a struggling actress from the UK trying to make it, without a green card, in New York City. To make ends meet, she works for a law firm to catch men willing to cheat on their wives. She doesn't feel great about it, but it gives her a chance to practice her acting and it helps pay the bills. 

Enter Stella, wife of Patrick Fogler, a Columbia University professor. Claire is asked to meet with Stella before she attempts to seduce her husband, and she meets with her in a hotel room. After Patrick rejects Claire's advances, she reports back to Stella, gets her money, and leaves.

This is when things just absolutely fall apart. Stella is found dead in the hotel room, and this whodunit is anything but a classic storyline. Claire is a textbook version of an unreliable narrator, and the shifts in the story left me intrigued, confused, and deeply interested in finding out who exactly was responsible for what. Which parts of the story, if any, are Claire's imagination? Who is trying to fool whom? What is real, what is fantasy?

I wasn't sure until I read the ending who was responsible for the mayhem and murder and psychological games being played, and I thought the whole story was fantastical, but in the best way possible. I definitely recommend giving this one a try!

Final rating:

★★★★☆

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Location: Maine, USA

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