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Get ready to be addicted to the page-turning new mystery thriller from the #1 bestselling author of The Trap and 56 Days, in which two women’s shattered lives come crashing together around a house whose secrets could bury them both.
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.
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.
Publisher: Bantam/Transworld
Format: Ebook, Audiobook, Hardback, Paperback (16 July 2026)
Source: Ecopy to review
MY THOUGHTS
Set in Ireland, this latest thriller from Catherine Ryan Howard is certainly a twisty read, set over the years and told from several perspectives. Number 1 Delaney Row in Dublin has a chequered history, and is viewed with suspicion by the locals with rumours aplenty as to what may have happened within its walls. When Ellie first arrives at the dilapidated property with just a suitcase, events are set in motion which have far reaching consequences.
The story features Ellie, Erin and Hannah. Three women all of whom have separate lives but their stories intertwine. Over shifting timelines and perspectives, there are revelations, some unexpected, others not so, but it becomes clear that there is one common denominator.
In the present day, Ellie guards her privacy furiously, almost to the point of paranoia. There is clearly something in her past that she is trying to keep secret but by moving to Delaney Row, that proves to be difficult with all the sinister events she had to cope with including the feeling of being watched. I had my suspicions as to what she was hiding and was proved to be partly correct but not for the right reasons.
Setting up the backstories over timelines did slow the book somewhat initially but nevertheless there was an ever present sense of tension. With revelations coming thick and fast, the pace speeds up and the story turns into a compelling and sinister read.
Whilst I enjoyed the book it wasn’t my favourite by this author but it is a good solid read with well drawn characters and a complex plot that ultimately brings the threads together. The house, which features so centrally, was suitably creepy and atmospheric. Ellie was braver than me – I wouldn’t have spent one night there!
My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the invite and to the publisher for the digital copy to review.
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.
Author links: Website | Facebook | Insta | AmazonUK
