The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (2018) Review

Rear Window is one of my favourite movies, so when I saw a book that promised to give me the same vibes, I was down!

In the woman in the Window, we follow Anna fox, the quintessential unreliable witness – she is an alcoholic and agoraphobe who lives alone. Out of boredom, she spies on her neighbours and soon starts to suspect something sinister is going on at their house. 

When the cops don’t believe her, Anna starts doubting herself. But what if someone is in danger?

 The best thing about this book is the pacing. It was a page-turner with so many twists, your head spins for hours. But that was it; this book, to me, was a compilation of tropes thrown randomly on the page without much care for plotting or character development. The depiction of mental disorders was appalling, as the author used them more than once as a plot device without much consideration for how harmful and wrong he was being. 

The female character read as if clearly written by a man, and the twists were absurd. Also, as you guys know, my pet peeve is when an author doesn’t play fair with the solution, I felt that the last twist relied on a fact that was neither on the pages nor necessary. It would have worked the same without that choice. (sorry, I am vague! But I am still trying to avoid spoilers). The Woman in the Window is one of the few books I have read since last year. I felt compelled to use my deduction criteria, but mental disorder depictions were atrocious, tone-deaf, and misrepresented.

 I can’t recommend this book. Unfortunately, it was entertaining, but it was a cliche mess that read as if it was written by a man who hasn’t checked his privilege and thinks too highly of himself.

Is my opinion of the book strong? Yes, but it is heavily coloured by my opinion of the author. I’ll just leave what I know and let you draw your conclusion.

Things Finn were caught lying about are:

• Having earned a Doctorate from Oxford
• Being a cancer and brain tumor survivor
• Losing his mother to cancer and his brother to suicide
• Blaming his lies on a mental disorder. Finn says he suffers from Bipolar II Disorder 

Usually, I feel bad giving a bad review, but not this time.

My total rating: 2.5