Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea

The first thing I did when I finished Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea was message my friend.

“WHAT A GOOD BOOK!” I exclaimed – and that wasn’t the half of it.

Charlie Donlea knows how to keep his readers on the edge of their seats for the entire ride. Protagonist Sidney Ryan is producing a true-crime documentary about a woman named Grace Seabold, who was convicted of murdering her boyfriend while on holiday. Grace has spent the last ten years in an overseas prison.

Grace’s story will strike fear in the heart of any reader who has ever travelled and worried about something going wrong. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Schapelle Corby. Not only to be imprisoned, but in a foreign land far from everything and everyone familiar to you. A holiday gone horribly wrong. A nightmare.

Donlea is a master when it comes to sowing doubt. He made me doubt my suspicions, regardless of what Sidney herself believed. This book asks all the questions that so often plague people when faced with these extraordinary cases. What if she didn’t do it? What is she did? What was her motive? Could someone else have done it? We inevitably put ourselves in the same position and wonder if, even if we were guilty, would we deserve that level of isolation and fear? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Sidney’s approach to the documentary is really fascinating – she is producing a real-time documentary, presenting her findings on air as she investigates. Her audience discovers what she discovers as she discovers it. As do we, the readers! I felt as though the book was the documentary. Donlea cleverly stages each discovery and positions each plot twist so that we feel like Sidney is taking us along for the ride. The format is varied – with grabs from the documentary itself, interviews, flashbacks and present-day scenes – which kept it interesting the whole way through. The pace was so snappy, I felt the urgency of Sidney’s enormous and daunting task as conflicting information piled on top of her.

And nothing prepared me for that ending. I actually sat bolt upright, took off my glasses and stared at the page saying: “NO. WAY.”

I want to watch this documentary. I want to meet these people and interview them myself. I want justice for these characters. My own questions were arising with each page. I was itching with the need to be involved in solving the mystery and in a way, thanks to the author, I was.

Buy Don't Believe It by Charlie Donlea here.