An interesting read that was a little different but I found there was something missing. Perhaps it was just that it didn’t live up to its hype.

An unreliable narrator is never going to be endearing but whilst I was keen to read on I didn’t get the satisfying pull that I usually get from a psychological thriller.

The use of the film noir and the quotes have it a different feel to other books of this nature but whilst it was a good read it didn’t knock my socks off!

3.75-4*

I would define The Woman in the Window as a dark thriller (I just made that category up, I don’t know if it’s real or not). It’s being made into a film (yes, even before it’s release as a book – I think that tells you everything you need to know). Unusually, I am actually looking forwards to the film because the book is so cinematic and has so many other film noir references that I think it could be made to look like a beautiful black and white Hitchcock style movie. I doubt this will actually happen but it would look AMAZING. Just saying, all-the-Hollywood-producers-who-don’t-read-my-reviews.

The book stars (do books have stars?) Anna, a psychologist living with agoraphobia which is so severe that she can’t leave the house. Unable to work and with alcohol dependency issues, she finds solace in online communities talking to other people in similar positions. Anna is also an avid watcher of people and knows everything that’s going on in her neighbourhood with the help of her trusty zoom lens camera. Most of the events that she glimpses are fairly mundane, until she spots what she believes to be a crime happening in the house next door. However, Anna’s diet of merlot and anti depressants make her a thoroughly unreliable narrator. Did she see what she thought she did? Is her mind playing tricks on her?

I read this book almost in one go, it was *that* good. Unfortunately, I started it in the bath, which made for one very cold and tired Lucinda so if you do decide to give it a read then please, make yourself comfortable before you begin. I really did find the novel unputdownable, it was so fast paced and there was so many twists and turns that kept me guessing right to the end. I did half work out part of what was going on but there was still enough red herrings included to make the outcome utterly unpredictable.

It’s at this point that I feel I should mention the elephant in the room – the comparison to Gone Girl. I fully expect the advertising for this book to begin with the line “fans of Gone Girl will love…” and it’s true that the overall “domestic drama” tag can be applied to both novels. Despite the similarities (unreliable narrator, female-centric, lots of twists and turns) there are also a lot of differences. Gone Girl is very much a 21st century novel, whereas The Woman in the Window has a much more vintage feel. Gone Girl has a major twist, The Woman in the Window has lots of little twists that help you to gradually build a picture of what’s going on. Gone Girl has a bit of a let down ending, The Woman in the Window finishes with a real bang. I loved both books but it’s important to note that The Woman in the Window is not the next Gone Girl, but a brilliant thriller in its own right.

I loved how beautifully dark and twisted The Woman in the Window was. Anna’s obsession with old black and white films, the restricted setting, the references to old Hollywood actresses all made the book feel like it was a revision of a play or an adaptation of a script from the 1950’s. I thought that the level of violence was just right – enough to provide a shock but not so much that it’s turned into a gore fest. The overall tone was a sense of foreboding dread, something that I think is really hard to maintain throughout an entire novel but which was dealt with brilliantly by the author.

I adored Anna’s character and I thought that her psychological problems were handled really well. It was good to see a middle class, educated person struggling with their mental health whilst also receiving treatment – usually if a character has money their problems are swept under the carpet. It was great that Anna’s character showed that depression and addiction can affect anyone and can be incredibly difficult to treat, regardless of how much you know your behaviour is irrational and self destructive.

The only teeny tiny criticism that I have of this book is the cover. Seriously, who came up with such a dull picture? I’ve also seen one that features the side of a building’s external fire escape (literally nothing to do with the story). I guess there’s been a very limited budget given to the artwork because I’m sure that once the film is released there’ll be a terrible “Now a major motion picture” cover but still, could they not have come up with something more intriguing in the meantime?

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. It had me gripped from the start and kept me in suspense right to the end. I loved the old Hollywood film noir feel juxtaposed with the gritty realism of alcoholism and depression. A great novel to get lost in.

The woman in the window is a fantastic debut novel by A.J.Finn and can't wait to see what comes next.
The woman in the window is Anna, she has had a traumatic past that gets drip fed to you over the course of the book. Anna cannot go outside and lives her life through the lens of her camera at one of her windows. Anna watches her neighbours comings and goings and finds out about them on the internet, to get through day to day life she depends heavily on merlot and antidepressants. I have to say the beginning was rather slow for me and I did wonder what all the hype was about but I loved the short chapters which are short and helped to make it feel as if it was really moving somewhere. Then the story picks up pace as she witnesses something in her neighbours window.....but did she, was it the alcohol and pills or did she really see what she thought she saw??
This was a fab thriller that kept me up till all hours to finish and I have to say the finish is worth it and I never guessed how this was going to plan out at all. I can't wait for the next one!!
I would like to thank Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

This book is hard to put down. The story has many "twist and turns and I did not see the end coming. It starts off quite slowly but the pacing gradually increases throughout the book all the way up until a tense and surprising ending. There was something menacing about the style of this book..... an unnerving feeling. If you enjoy Alfred Hitchcock psychological movies you will enjoy this. You will also enjoy the many old films quotes .

What a fantastic debut,

Anna Foxes story unfolds, she doesn't leave the house, but witnesses a murder.
This novel keeps you completely absorbed from the start. has great characters, plenty of twists and turns and an ending I just did not foresee.
What more can I say apart from .............JUST READ IT

Thank you netgalley, HarperCollins and A J Finn for allowing me to read and review this book.

“A scream, raw and horrorstruck, torn from the throat”

Loved it, loved it, loved it! As a huge fan of Hitchcock and Hitchcockian films, The Woman in the Window was a must-read for me in 2018 and, in my opinion, totally holds up under the expectations placed upon it. From the tantalising opening to the thrilling climax, it is a completely compelling read that drew me in, wrapped me up and held me down until I was as much a prisoner of circumstance as Anna!

The book absolutely gripped me from the off and I could barely put it down: lunchtimes lengthened, bath water cooled around me, TV shows got rewound, paused and eventually switched off as I raced through it. There’s a constant drip drip drip of something not quite right throughout the story and you are constantly looking for clues to…well, you’re not even sure to what at first!

“…Les Diaboliques tonight. A rat-bastard husband, his “little ruin” of a wife, a mistress, a murder, a vanished corpse. Can you beat a vanished corpse?”

The plotting is fantastic and each chapter, while not necessarily ending on a cliffhanger, leaves you wanting more. I loved the structure and the deft style of planting the clues. I may have worked out one or two of the twists along the way but the final one was a kicker and the overall effect still floored me.

The book is also beautifully written, with a rhythmic style – almost poetic in places – and I highlighted lots of great lines on my Kindle. The descriptions, both of Anna’s feelings and of her surroundings are very artfully brought to life. My heart regularly broke for her on her emotional rollercoaster and I could absolutely envisage every inch of the beautiful but stifling town house, as well as her limited view of the world beyond.

“I remember dropping a glass onto the patio once; it burst like a bubble, merlot flaring across the ground and flooding the veins of the stonework, dark and bloody, crawling toward my feet”

Anna is a great character and a wonderfully unique narrator – vulnerable, fragile and fallible but also resolute, determined and decent; surprisingly, she is also frequently dry and often hilarious. I must admit that I was not expecting that from this book.

I lost count of the number of times I actually laughed out loud, re-read a perfectly constructed line and once again, highlighted it on my Kindle. Here are some choice examples, but there are dozens more:

“Second half bath, this one blued in ‘Heavenly Rapture,’ which is ambitious language for a room with a toilet.”

“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. DSM-5 for short…it sounds like a movie franchise. Liked Mental Disorders 4? You’ll love the sequel!”

“I scan my legs and torso with my hand, like I’m presenting a prize on a game show. You too can win this disused thirty-eight-year-old body!”

“I’m trapped in a police car fondling my fat. This is a new low.”

In summary, this book was pretty much everything I hoped it would be: thrilling, mysterious, exciting, dramatic and Hitchcockian. There are references to loads of my favourite films – Rear Window, Vertigo, The Lady Vanishes, they’re all in there, plus Gaslight, Charade, even shades of the more modern Copycat – but it is so much more than that.

With the added bonus of some witty lines, a marvellous lead in Anna and brilliant supporting characters, this is an incredible book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

With thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollinsUK HarperFiction for the ARC of The Woman In The Window.

Insufferably self-absorbed, incredibly boring, agoraphobic alcoholic witnesses a murder in a house she regularly spies on and then does everything in her power to convince everyone she's insane and that the murder didn't happen.

Basic plot, flimsily dressed up as a smart psychological thriller. Author forgot to write in the psychological thriller part. 100% boring. Protagonist needed a nail gun to the head.

Plot twists were blatantly obvious long before they were 'revealed'. Unrealistic characters and flawed logic. Shit-loads of plot convenience.

99% filler.

Wouldn't wish this book on my worst enemy.

Would never read anything from the author again if my life depended on it.

0/5*

Marked as 'the book of 2018' with the film rights snapped up, is this the new woman on the train? The new gone girl? Well it stands up with them on its own merit.

Anna is an agoraphobic, struggling with alcohol, self medication and the separation from her husband and daughter. When she witnesses an incident in a window opposite her house, can she make sense of it all?

This is quite an eerie read and without giving the ending away it's a teeny bit predictable but still a brilliant read. The question is who would play Anna in the film!
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

The Woman in the Window is an intense, suspenseful thriller which I hugely enjoyed, from the very first page to last. The characters, though odd in their own ways (main protagonist Anna certainly has her quirks, and at times I was a little frustrated at her decisions, but I loved reading about her anyway) made for really great reading; there are plenty of characters whose integrity come into question, which I loved – in fact, even Anna, whose eyes we see the whole story through, made me doubt her at times. I felt bad doing so, because that’s exactly what everyone else is doing, but she’s certainly not helping herself – and there’s some strange underlying themes which can be a little uncomfortable to read about, but which only intrigued me more!

The story itself is slightly surreal at times, with strange things occurring and lots of ‘half-truths’ and ‘sort-of-seen’ things from Anna’s point of view to confuse the reader as you try and work out what is really happening – is she uncovering something very important in her neighbourhood or is it actually all in her head? Again, I loved this element of uncertainty; it only made me want to read on and try to work out what was happening…

I sort of guessed some aspects of the story, but there were also some fun twists and surprises along the way. I ended up racing through this in no time and would certainly like to read more from Anna.

Overall I found this a hugely absorbing and fun read which I couldn’t put down! The pacing is just right and I feel it definitely holds its own among the various heavyweights in this genre; it’s different enough to stand out but with enough mystery and twists to keep it classed as an excellent psychological thriller!

Of all the many psychological thrillers that are released this one stands out for all the right reasons. I had been looking forward to reading this book for some time and I’m happy to say I was not disappointed.

The Woman in the Window was exactly what I hope for when reading a book in this genre. It was creepy, full of suspense and it twisted and turned in ways I did not foresee and I was completely absorbed from start to finish.

Anna Fox is a former child psychologist who lives alone, although she still talks to her husband and daughter. As an agoraphobic she focuses most of her attention, between drinking too much and taking too many pills, on watching her neighbours and going on Internet forums. Her only human contact is form her lodger in the basement and one or two other visitors, such as her physical therapist.

The characterization was great and I felt sad for Anna at times, as she veered between, on the one hand, trying to deal with various issues in her life and, on the other, trying to anaesthetise them.

As the ultimate unreliable narrator, it’s no surprise that when Anna witnesses a crime being committed in her neighbours’ house nobody believes her. But that’s just the start…

I don’t want to say any more and spoil it for others, so I will finish by telling you to read this book. You will not be disappointed.

Anna Fox suffers from agoraphobia, the fear of being outside, and for the last ten months she has been inside her house watching old movies, counseling online other people who are agoraphobic like her, taking medications and drinking an alarming quantity of wine. In her former life, Anna was a child psychologist married to Ed with whom she has a daughter, Olivia. But now Ed and Olivia are gone and Anna only talks to them on the phone.

Anna spends her days spying on the neighbors and, at the moment, she is drawn to the Russells, the family who just moved next door: Alistair and Jane and their sixteen-year-old son Ethan. Anna starts to spy on them from her window but one night she sees something terrible, something that she wasn’t supposed to see. But when no one believes her story, Anna has to take the matter in her own hands.

What I loved about this book is that Anna is an unreliable character. The story is told in first person but, because of her drinking and medications and because of her psychological situation, you don’t know if she is telling the truth. As the truth about her past, about the cause of her phobia slowly unravels, the suspense raises and I couldn’t wait to read what would happen next.

If the first book I read this year is anything to go by, this is going to be a great year book-wise. THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is the terrific, remarkable, and engrossing exploration inside a woman’s mind, her fears, her guilt, and her hopes. A. J. Finn’s writing is superb, captivating, and keeps you glued to the page. I loved the attention to details and the descriptions of Anna’s feelings are so vivid and evocative that I could really feel for her.

If you loved The Girl On The Train you will adore this. Unreliable drunk main character, she spies on people, she sees something horrible, nobody believes her. The right ingredients for the perfect thriller. Add an Hitchcockian setting and you have an unputdownable book.

Full of complex and well-drawn characters, a well-developed, twisty, and completely absorbing novel, suspenseful but also a bit emotional, I stayed up late at night reading and I refused to go to bed until I reached the end which resulted in me going to work next morning sleep-deprived but a very satisfied and happy reader.

OUTSTANDING.......
Clever clever writing by A.J Finn I was totally intrigued from the first page and had to finish in one sitting. I had no idea what was waiting for me from page to page I was absolutely gobsmacked with the truth. On tenterhooks.. brilliant

So we’re still in January and another book is being hyped as ‘the thriller of the year’! I was sceptical as always, but it does deserve credit as a really good psychological thriller!
I loved the flawed main character, Anna. She drinks heavily, she’s agoraphobic and loves nothing more than to be nosy and watch of the comings and goings of her neighbours through the telescopic lens of her camera.
I wanted to know more about Anna and her life and couldn’t wait to find out what was happening with her neighbours.
Great twists and turns- most of which I did not see coming.
Highly recommend.
Thanks to NetGalley for an advance Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Dr Anna Fox can no longer leave her house, post traumatic stress disorder has got her trapped so she becomes interested in her neighbours. Mixing meds and drink she begins to see and hear things but is what she's seeing true? What is her own story and can she figure out what's real.

This was a good read. If you're a fan of girl on the train you'll probably like this. The plot was good and contained some interesting twists. I did figure out some of the twists but a couple took me by surprise.

Anna is an interesting character. She is dealing with a lot and seems to be determined to make things harder for herself. However you do feel for her more and more as the story develops.

A great thriller.

Anna’s life is tragic, and circumstances force her to become a voyeur, vicariously living through her window. The world of black and white noir thrillers her only escape. She drinks to forget and to soften the edges of her painful, lonely existence. Ten months she has lived alone, terrified to leave what should be her dream home. She exists on a cocktail of medication, which she either forgets to take or overdoses on, so when Anna sees something shocking, though the neighbour’s window she is not a reliable witness.
Everything is seen through Anna’s eyes but is what she sees, part of her delusional state or something sinister? I like Anna and feel a connection with her. Is she a victim of paranoia, or a conspiracy? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?
Perfect pacing means that even where there are lots of details and drunken confusion, these don’t hinder the story but inform the reader. Although, given the unreliableness of the narrator, not everything you discover is true.
The characters are vivid, as is the setting and the suspense building is cleverly done. The atmosphere moves from mundane to terrifying seamlessly and has more impact because of this.The plot is twisty and the shocks when they come, alter facts you were sure of, making it essential to turn the page and see what happens next.
Anna’s condition is treated sensitively, Sharing poignant memories and longings with the reader, which keep her character and the story believable.
A worthwhile read, some of the twists you may guess, but there are some you won’t. The ending brings the suspense to a crashing crescendo as the mystery is solved and Anna has to decide whether she wants to live or die. Reading these scenes is like watching a film, just like the black and white thrillers Anna loves.
I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins – Harper Fiction via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This book has the unique premise of an agoraphobic main character, and I found it really interesting how all of the thriller elements were filtered through her viewpoint. The story is very tightly plotted and unusually hard to predict, right up until the end. 'The Woman in the Window' is perfect for fans of 'Gone Girl' and 'Girl on the Train', and it ended up being my favourite of the three books!

Finn's writing style grips you from the first page but a few pages in I became a bit lost by her use of setting. I just couldn't get a sense of where Anna's house was in connection to her neighbour across a park into whose house she could see perfectly well. But I persevered and think that the book pays off in the end because of the expert way Finn creates tension. Like a lot of these psychological thrillers you probably know whodunnit before the end and you probably think, "hell, that was so expected it isn't true." The truth is there's nothing new, no new twists but read this book because it is one of the better ones.

A fast-paced, psychological thriller. A fab must-read debut novel. I am looking forward to seeing what else this author comes up with next.

This book was better than I thought it would be as I’ve seen some mixed reviews.
Anna is trapped in her home as she suffers from agoraphobia and to keep herself busy she keeps an eye on her neighbours through her window.
New neighbours move in and seem friendly at first but then Anna hears a scream come from their house. She can’t go over as she’s afraid to go out so she makes a phone call and is told everything is ok.
She then sees something more sinister and calls the Police but as she is drunk and on medication they don’t believe her account of what she saw.
Things start to unravel for Anna and go from bad to worse....
This is a gripping story and has a great ending.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Anna Fox is a child psychologist who has recently separated from her husband. She is agoraphobic and an alcoholic. Her days are filled with pills, alcohol and online forums. Anna is also a film buff with a love of old black and white films. She watches her neighbours through the window and whilst doing this she witnesses a violent incident. Nobody believes her...

The premise of this book reminded me very much of Rear Window but it is not a retelling of that story. Anna was a really interesting character with lots or troubles and secrets. Her agroraphobia is dealt with very sympathetically and I think that this may be the only book that I have read that has dealt with this subject matter. Her love of old films was something that I loved reading about because I love those type of films too. This was a so much more than a psychological thriller, I did guess the twist but I didn't guess the ending. I would not say this was a fast paced book but I would highly recommend it.