Believe Me: The twisty and addictive thriller from bestselling author of The Girl Before

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However, Delaney executed it in a way even someone entirely unfamiliar with this format could enjoy. But in college, despite the fact that I did not major in theatre, by some happenstance, I had occasion to take a very large number of acting classes. It had a unique structure and the narrative came across as sophisticated and Clair (the narrator) gives you a whole new approach to unreliable narrator. I found myself rather bored for most of part one and even considered putting the book down and coming back to it later a couple of times. The reader almost always has to keep guessing what Claire actually believes in until we realise there is no real person behind the mask, and that the mask is no longer an act.

This novel is mostly set in the theater world and our main character, Claire, is a young actress trying to make a living in NYC and eager to do anything to pay her rent. This book has a very interesting variety of characters, we have elegant and artistic actors; classy, intelligent and very poetic victim’s husband, and like always, insightful police. Everything about it was so carefully crafted, from the story to the characters to the writing techniques. I liked that the setting of this book was constantly changing, that created more intrigue to me, as a reader.

Something I loved about this story was that it intertwined Claire's real life and her love of acting. There is so much going on in this book, that until the end, you're never quite sure what to believe, or who. The opinion of Claire, the protagonist in this novel, couldn’t be more divergent from mine when it comes to the topic of basking in the glow of the spotlight. Due to the lack of green card and work, she is forced to work as a decoy in catching out cheating spouses. I’ve seen shy introverts become kings and queens, the ugly become beautiful and the beautiful repulsive.

Delaney showcases this power in his book, both through Baudelaire’s life and poetry, and through the story of the novel itself. There are rules that need to be followed, the spouse withe the wandering eye needs to proposition her, and she needs to get it all on tape.

As for the other reviewers who compared it to Gone Girl, I think in terms of pace and excitement this book is similar to Gone Girl but the plot and outcome is unique in of it self. Once the twists in the book begin to happen my internal debate meter shot off the chart and it wasn’t as if you are thrown a whole pile of suspects but the psychological side showed in playing mind games with the reader.

This is an entertaining and thrilling read, albeit you do have to suspend your sense of disbelief at times. When the wife of her most recent target is found brutally murdered it signals the end of Claire’s decoy job and the NYPD start asking serious questions. Delaney, I did not read the original version of this book, but I would like to go on record saying that this recreation of your original idea is a true masterpiece. The author did a phenomenal job at tricking me into thinking that at different points different people had killed the wife. Thank you to Random House Publishing-Ballantine and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The red is eye catching sure, but everything else just didn’t interest me and I was hoping for something similar to the other covers that Delaney’s book have and I actually would have preferred the original title The Decoy over Believe Me.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel and recommend it to readers of thrillers, mysteries, and contemporary fiction. The performance aspect of her personality is a refreshingly innovative way to style an unreliable narrator!

Translations of Baudelaire’s work tend to bring some controversy, because it is incredibly difficult to capture the meaning, beauty, and horror of Baudelaire’s poems in a translation.