If these walls could talk, they’d scream…

When Ellie moves into 1 Delaney Row, all she has to her name is the house, a small suitcase and the terrible secrets she’s desperate to keep. But what she doesn’t know is that her new home is already hiding someone else’s secrets – and the people determined to keep them are watching her.

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When a grim discovery prompts Ellie to find out more about the house’s past, she unwittingly puts herself on a deadly collision course not just with her new home’s history, but with her own as well…

Inspired by so-called ‘stigmatised properties’ – houses with dark and violent pasts – Buyer Beware is an intricate puzzle-box of a thriller with a pulsing emotional heart, from an author at the very top of her game.

My Review

When my kids were at school, they weren’t very good at team sports (like me). Other mums would boast about how wonderful their kids were, so much better than mine. Then along came the grandson of a famous cricket commentator and everyone else paled in comparison.

And so it is with this book. There are average writers, there are good writers, and then along comes Catherine Ryan Howard, and the rest pale in comparison. OK, I exaggerate. There are lots of great writers, but you get my drift.

Buyer Beware could have been longer, but it wasn’t. That’s part of what I loved. The suspense, the action and the tension never let up. No waffling. No unnecessary musings on life.

Ellie owns a run down house she never knew she owned. And the neighbours can be a bit odd, particularly Annaliese. Hannah shocks her friends and her deeply religious mother by saying she doesn’t want to get married or have children. And Erin gives everything up to be with her useless partner Jason.

But how are they linked? And why is Ellie so hostile? And who are The Murder Club who meet in the pub once a month? They claim to know stuff and one of them believes he’s a bit psychic. Houses hold memories of evil Ellie is told. Or is it more than just memories?

Such a great read! Not my first by this author and certainly won’t be the last.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of the #BuyerBeware blog tour

About the Author

Catherine Ryan Howard is the author of nine novels including the no. 1 bestsellers The Nothing Man, 56 Days, The Trap and Burn After Reading. Her work has been shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Crime Writers Association New Blood and Steel Daggers, and Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year multiple times. The screen adaptation of her lockdown thriller, 56 Days, is streaming now on Prime Video. She lives in Dublin.