After finishing Thirteen, when I searched for more thrillers on AnyBooks app, the book that came up as a suggestion was The Woman in the Window. I had seen this book too around Bookstagram last year. And so I decided to read it solely due to Bookstagram. The title was intriguing enough for me.
As the title suggests, it’s about a woman who spies on her neighbors through her window. Dr Anna Fox has agoraphobia, which simply put is the fear of going anywhere outside your house. Anna lives alone and to anyone who asks she says that she’s separated from her husband and her daughter is with the father. She spends her day watching old movies, drinking too much and spying on her neighbours. Then the Russells move in to the house across hers. A perfect family of father, mother and a teenaged son. But when one night Anna sees something that she shouldn’t, her reality comes crashing down. Her sanity is questioned and she is accused of hallucinating.
Even though the plot sounds similar to The Girl on the Train, it isn’t. There are literally no similarities between the two, other than what’s in the synopsis. I loved the plot. For a debut novel, Finn has done a great job. It has all the elements of a psychological thriller.
But for me, the book turned out to be quite slow at the start. Anna’s character establishment takes almost half of the book. I saw through Anna’s denials much before they were revealed in the book. I think the book took an interesting turn for me only in the second half. If it had happened a bit earlier in the book, I would have loved the book. I did figure out most of the revelations that came throughout the book except for the killer. But then I wasn’t really trying to figure out the killer either. I had accepted Anna’s suspicions and was just reading to find out how she will prove herself. So the actual killer did come as a surprise for me. Not what I expected at all.
I remember thinking towards the end that this book might make a good movie. And well it came as no surprise that it is indeed being made into a movie and it is slated for release this year. Amy Adams and Julianne Moore is in the cast. The trailer looks quite promising and I have a feeling that this might be an exception where I like the movie more than the book.
My Rating: 3.5⭐/5.
