By 2001, Dean had written her first novel and left advertising to pursue writing full time, moving to Provence until 2007, when she returned to live in Kent with her children.

[11] When published in the US, Dean was compared to John Updike by the San Francisco Chronicle, who called the novel of "breathtaking" and "extraordinary" and a promise of a "spectacular career".

J. M. Coetzee wrote, "With clear-eyed compassion, and with all the resources of the novelist's art, Louise Dean leads us through those terrible days when for a while Belfast was a vortex for the worst of the world's cruelty and pain."

"[13] In 2005 The Observer dubbed Dean a "significant voice in British fiction"[14] and The Wall Street Journal called her one of the world's five most underrated authors.

She was described by The Independent's John Walsh as "a giggly blonde dreamboat, who swears like a Folkestone docker and extends her long, slender body like an Anglepoise lamp.... Louise Dean read from a work-in-progress that contained a swaggering reference to anal sex....

In her long, spider-patterned silk frock, she was transformed under the hot lights into an instant star, a flash-popping vision of perfect teeth, hair, bright eyes and décolletage.

Boyd Tonkin commented, "Like its predecessors, it channels the rough music of everyday life for non-Bloomsbury folk with a tragicomic subtlety, a pin-sharp ear for dialogue and a flair for every nuance of character and class.

[20][21] By 2021, the team of tutors included bestselling authors and The Novelry was working with leading global literary agencies to get new writing talent published via Dean's fast-track novel-writing courses.