1 Delaney Row is a house with a history. Stories abound locally about dark incidents in the house’s past, but when Ellie moves into the house with just a small suitcase and a small handful of cash, she is bringing a whole new set of secrets with her.

Hopeful for a new start in life, what Ellie finds is the start of a nightmare. People constantly break into the house, destroying what few possessions she own and leaving messages telling her to leave. But is someone trying to keep the secrets of the house quiet – or is someone trying to expose Ellie’s?

As events in the past and the present dovetail, it starts to look like 1 Delaney Row may well be the last place Ellie ever lives…

Buyer Beware is the ninth novel from Catherine Ryan Howard. I always keep an eye out for Catherine’s work as she’s an author whom I’ve been with since the start of her publishing success when I was sent a review copy of the excellent Distress Signals back in 2016. Since then, I’ve enjoyed all of her books and have always been impressed by the variety of structures that she uses, often including meta-elements in a completely non-gimmicky way.

This is possibly the least gimmicky of all of Catherine’s books. OK, there’s a triple time frame, as we follow two very different women’s lives in the past, along with Ellie’s story in the present, but that’s it. As the book progresses, we see the stories from the past begin to overlap, and the links to the present day become clearer. Timing is everything with this sort of thing, and the author gets it spot on here.

There’s a very simple way to demonstrate this – I read this book in just over a day. It’s been an age since I’ve been this gripped by a book, but once the first link between the stories appeared, I needed to know what was happening, and how Ellie’s story would play out.

In part, it was how the story would all fit together, and in part, I was drawn in by the characters, in particular Ellie herself. Characterisation is another of Catherine’s strengths – I particularly liked how Ellie’s attempts to cover her tracks, only to fail miserably due to being… well, just not very good at it. Everything ties together, and the finale is as emotionally satisfying as you would hope. As you might expect for an emotionally satisfying tale, the twists are not as extreme as in some of Catherine’s earlier books – I don’t think I’d say I was surprised by any of them, to be honest, but do bear in mind I’ve been reading mysteries for a very, very long time. But also bear in mind that this didn’t make the slightest difference to how much I enjoyed the book.

Buyer Beware is out now in hardback and ebook from Transworld Books. Many thanks for the review e-copy via NetGalley.