The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn (Twitter)

Her Grace’s rating:  1 out of 5 stars (1 star only because I actually finished reading it)

Genre: mystery/thriller

I read it as a: hardback

Source: my own collection

Length: 427 pp

Published by: William Morrow (3/28/18)

Anna Fox was a child psychologist with a successful practice, happy marriage, and healthy daughter. Then she experiences a trauma and becomes agoraphobic. She hasn’t set foot out of her home for nearly a year and passes her time by watching old black and white films and spying on her neighbors through the windows with her camera. One day, she witnesses a murder and has a nervous breakdown when she tries to go outside to help. The cops don’t believe her – they think she’s just a drunk, which is true but doesn’t change what she saw – and her estranged husband doesn’t believe her, either. Anna has to convince everyone she is not insane or hallucinating in order to discover who the killer is and stop them before they come after her.

This book? Was WAY over-hyped. The writing style was all right and the basic premise of the story was theoretically interesting. The problem is that there was absolutely no suspense or nerve-wracking moments. The plot was entirely predictable and stereotypical, including Anna’s trauma and the identity of the killer. *Yawn*. Also, the theme of men writing women as crazy/ not believed/ let’s gaslight everything is so fucking dull. It *might* have been slightly more interesting if the protagonist had been a man, though that still wouldn’t solve the problem of being predictable. It was a readable story and only took me a few hours to read, what with work and all, but given the lack of anything unique or really interesting, I can’t really recommend it. 

Also, not relevant to the book, but as I was writing this review, I went online to look up the author’s website. Lo and behold, I discovered that he is a pathological liar and spewed various untruths ranging from his imaginary doctorate from Oxford to brain tumors to his mother’s death. He has no doctorate from Oxford, no brain cancer (or any other kind, it seems), and his mother is alive and well. Regardless of how good his future novels might be, which I doubt, I would never read another book written by this gross individual. There are plenty of people who are actually talented and don’t have to resort to pathetic grabs for sympathy to get noticed. Vox has a really good article about this author’s multitude of deceptions.