Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard

Blurb:

From the internationally bestselling author of 56 Days, a page-turning thriller about two women whose 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 to 1 Delaney Row, she hopes to find a fresh start—a place where no one knows her name, her history, or her secrets. 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.

As Ellie starts to unravel the house’s disturbing backstory, coming closer to the shocking mystery at its center, she unwittingly puts herself on a deadly collision course not just with her new home’s history, but with her own as well.

A puzzle box of a thriller full of mind-boggling twists and turns, Buyer Beware is a chilling exploration of the dark secrets that any house can hold—and of the lengths we’ll go to start over.

Review:

“If these walls could talk, they’d scream.”

-Catherine Ryan Howard, Buyer Beware

After Ellie moves to Delaney Row to find a fresh start and escape her tumultuous past, hoping nobody will remember her name, her history, or her secrets, she doesn’t expect to discover that her new home is hiding somebody else’s dark background. Cornered by those who are desperate to keep their backstory’s secret, she’s compelled to unveil the history of the house and draw nearer to the shocking mysteries it conceals. Putting herself on a dangerous and potentially lethal position to uncover the secrets that might be better left buried, she risks revealing her own furtive past, too.

Buyer Beware was my first introduction to a novel by Catherine Ryan Howard, although it wasn’t the first book she’s written—and I could tell from the start that this author was one who’d harnessed the ability to tell a thrilling, psychologically immense narrative that would leave readers gasping and gritting their teeth with every turn of a page. She’s a master of coining tension and building it instead of letting it lapse, and Buyer Beware certainly left me dizzy with its plot twists and plot turns that I didn’t see coming.

In Buyer Beware, Ellie especially makes for an intriguing character. Plagued by her own vile history, it’s a unique theme to have her not being able to leave the house’s mysteries well enough alone, but hoping to keep her own history concealed. It gives readers the sense that something is not quite right, and that feeling is exacerbated throughout the narrative up to the twisted, cunning conclusion.

The supporting cast of characters was especially uncanny and strange, and the way each character was introduced often had me not wanting to trust them. It constantly felt like something was in the house with Ellie, and with every new personality put to the page, I wondered: “was this the person who’s going to endanger her so much?”

In terms of the plot twists and turns, I couldn’t get enough of them in this novel. Howard has a unique talent for amassing conflict rather than letting it flounder. Every stilted conversation between characters, every half-plausible excuse for odd actions, made this novel sweat with the perspiration of its intensity. 

This is the kind of book that would easily get readers into consuming countless numbers of thriller and mystery novels. This is the kind of book that made me love thrillers and mysteries so much, the kind of story that makes it so rewarding to pick up and begin a story that I know is going to bamboozle me. Both with its narrative and with the secrets that will eventually unfold by way of the pages.

Howard’s prose is simple but articulate and makes it possible to understand what’s going on and where it’s happening without over-burdening the narrative with lushness that might not fit this type of storyline. Every line is written with excellence, promising tension to come and secrets to be unraveled. It is the book that keeps on giving, per se.

I am honored to have received an ARC copy of this novel, and I can’t wait for this book to release. I loved Buyer Beware, and I’m sure other avid thriller readers will adore it just as much—if not more—than I did, myself.