Review of The Woman in the Window

If you’re looking to read more suspense, look no further. The Woman in the Window was a gripping, page-turning addition to the current unreliable girl narrator trend and a wonderful homage to classic suspense movies.  Read my review of The Woman in the Window below!

Jen’s Quick Take on the Woman in the Window

• Clearly Hitchcock inspired
• Will be completely predictable to those readers who have read all the unreliable “girl” books

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

To be published on January 2, 2018 by William Morrow. Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Review of The Woman in the Window

So, first off, yes. The Woman in the Window is part of a long (okay, just a few years but seems longer) trend of unreliable girl narrator books.

First we had Gone Girl and then The Girl on the Train.

Of course, The Woman in the Window is also an homage to that man in the window, “Jeff” Jeffries, the protagonist of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window.

This movie, about a guy with a broken leg who watches a crime through a window and isn’t believed, must have also inspired Girl on the Train.

Like the protagonist in Rear Window, Anna Fox is confined to her townhouse (though suffering from agoraphobia, not a broken leg).

Like Jeff Jefferies in the movie, Anna is a photographer who passes the time watching her neighbors. Anna also watches and references Hitchcock films in the story.

So this book answered a question of mine:

Can I find a suspense story somewhat predictable and also completely enjoyable?  For me, the answer was yes.

In some ways, this book felt very similar to Girl on the Train. Both feature heroines who struggle with alcoholism. In The Woman in the Window, Anna also – against medical advice – mixes her wine with prescription medication, which makes her grasp on reality seem even more tenuous.

Both Girl on the Train and Woman in the Window feature heroines who have been left by their husbands and/or family and seem very alone. Both feature heroines who see a crime committed and, because they both are impaired and seem somewhat paranoid, can’t get anyone to believe them.

While I enjoyed both books, in some ways I think that The Woman in the Window was a more successful book. While in The Girl on the Train, Rachel is able to stagger around spying on people, Anna is completely trapped. Her agoraphobia really added to the suspense and also made her a much more sympathetic character.

Though I was able to predict pretty much every twist and turn in the story (edited to add that this book’s major twist has appeared a bunch of times in YA books over the past few years, which is probably why I figured it out), that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book one bit. 

Bottom line: if you loved The Girl on the Train and/or are a Hitchcock fan, I definitely recommend checking this out.

Since this book’s concept is now a subject of parody, also check out The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window on Netflix. If you’ve read any of these books, it’s funny.

Have you read this or are you going to? Tell me in comments!

Loved this one? Check out Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake or The Last Word by Taylor Adams