The Woman in the Window

Agoraphobia, bottles and bottles of wine, and new neighbors. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for Anna Fox, just about everything.

In this debut novel by AJ Finn that was optioned for film before it was even published, Anna Fox is an agoraphobic former child psychologist who hasn’t left her house in ten months. Her husband and daughter aren’t there with her, she spends a lot of time playing online chess, and she’s drinking while taking medication that doesn’t mix well with drugs. So it’s no wonder that she’s a bit freaked out when she thinks she sees a murder happen through the window of her neighbor’s house. But who will believe her? Did she really see what she thinks she saw? Who was that murdered woman? And what are her neighbors hiding?

This book is GREAT. Sure, it has predictable moments. I predicted one of the big twists from pretty early on, but that didn’t stop me from binge-reading to the very end. I literally screamed out loud at my desk at the end of p. 396. No spoilers, just be ready.  The Woman in the Window is perfect for fans of books like Girl on the Train, Lies She Told, and anything by Gillian Flynn or Ruth Ware. Anna Fox is an unreliable narrator to the outside, and maybe even to us, but that doesn’t make her any less compelling. Plus, Finn surrounds her with a fascinating cast of characters, neighbors who control their children and have affairs and aggressively look down on everyone else, a physical therapist, an online friend she meets on an agoraphobia forum and a former partner at her psychologist office.  They all meld together and separate again beautifully as we get to the core of what happened to Anna Fox to force her inside the house and what it might take to get her outside again.

This book is perfect for lovers of Alfred Hitchcock films who don’t need someone to reinvent the wheel but love going down a suspenseful road and following a well-done equation to get to a satisfying end. This is going to be the next Gone Girl movie, I’m betting.
Stay tuned for my dream-casting coming soon!