Title: The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Publisher: William Morrow

Verdict: 3/5

In a nutshell (Amazon):

For readers of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes one of the decade’s most anticipated debuts, to be published in thirty-six languages around the world and already in development as a major film from Fox: a twisty, powerful Hitchcockian thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she witnessed a crime in a neighboring house.

It isn’t paranoia if it’s really happening . . .

Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.

Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock.

My thoughts:

Anna is an agoraphobic who has a drinking problem, making her an unreliable narrator. So when she reported the incident she witnessed to the police, nobody believed her. They almost successfully convinced her that it was all in her head. But she had a nagging feeling, an intuition if you will, that what she saw WAS INDEED what she saw. But how was she to prove it? Or have the police and neighbors been right all along? This, was the only reason, that I stayed with the book.

This book, if tightened, would’ve been so much better. I felt the build-up to the story a little too draggy, the beginning especially! I was so tempted to jump right to the end of the book! (The pace only picked up at page 180 or so) Also, there were parts, for example the many references to the movies she was watching, I thought were unnecessary. And why stretch the part about the reason her husband and daughter not being with her? I honestly didn’t see the point of it.

If not for the twists at the end, I would’ve rated this book a 2. I had the same problem with The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. But I prefer The Woman in the Window to the other two.

Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? If you haven’t read it, do you plan to?

Till then, HAPPY READING!