Title: Buyer Beware

Author: Catherine Ryan Howard

Genre: Thriller/Suspense

Publisher: Bantam

Publication Date: 16th July 2026

Rating: 4/5

Cover:

Summary:

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.

Review:

I’m a big fan of Catherine Ryan Howard’s books (I particularly loved The Liar’s Girl and The Nothing Man) so I was excited to read her latest, Buyer Beware, and it didn’t disappoint. Buyer Beware follows three timelines, which don’t immediately appear to be connected, yet as the story develops the reader learns exactly how these narratives are connected. I loved the whole ‘stigmatised properties’ aspect, which delves into the idea that a house can hold and retain echoes of a traumatic or violent history. This was fascinating and tied in perfectly with the more human story going on in Buyer Beware. I would say this is more of an enjoyable slow burn of a mystery which unravels the truth of what went on in this decidedly creepy house and what it means for what is happening in the present day with a fabulously heightened sense of tension and atmosphere. I can’t pretend that any of the characters are all that likeable but that doesn’t bother me and I was completely hooked by needing to find out the secrets at play here and how everything would be resolved. Buyer Beware has a great sense of atmosphere to it, there is something simply undeniably chilling about the house at the centre of the book and it adds a very powerful mood to the story. All in all, Buyer Beware is a compelling, uneasy, dark, and intriguing bit of domestic suspense which I would definitely recommend if you enjoy more of a slowly unravelling thriller.

★★★★

Thank you so much to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me on this tour and organising it. I kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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