Woman in the Window

The basic premise of The Woman in the Window is somehow very similar to The Girl on the Train, without ever reaching the heights of said book for me. Even the title was chosen to appear similar, which I find a bit meh, if you ask me.

Anna Fox suffers from agoraphobia and hasn't left her house in almost a year. Instead she watches her neighbors through her camera zoom. This changes when new neighbors move in, the Russell Family. She gets to meet the 17 year old Ethan and his mother Jane. Both seem a bit intimidated or scared by the husband Alistair. A couple days later Anna witnesses Jane's murder through the window, but no one believes her, because Anna does not only suffer from her crippling phobia but also takes plenty of drugs and washes them down with alcohol. So how will the world believe her that she witnessed a murder?

There are two big story twists. The first one I didn't see coming, the bigger last one I saw coming from very early on in the book. Additionally, Anna is not halfway as sympathetic a character as Rachel was. I never feel like I can truly get into her head, even though it's a first person narrative. I just don't care as much.

So all in all, it was alright, but not worth any kind of hype.

I've got mixed feelings about this book. I might need more of a break from the unreliable narrator thing. I won't go into a whole lot of detail because there are so many twists and red herrings that I'm afraid I'll give something away and ruin someone's fun.

Because of the issues the protagonist has, I could never be sure about what was real and what wasn't. That forced me to stop guessing and my favorite part of mysteries is guessing.

There were a few bullshit moments but, I think, the biggest of them all was the final reveal. I get wanting to get that "ah ha!" from a reader but my reaction was more "ugh, what the fuck?!"

The resolution and wrap up at the end was okay but by then, I was mostly over it. Which was really too bad because there were several places in the book that I had other things to do and had to struggle to stop reading or listening.

I went back and forth between the ebook and the audio versions. They each had their strengths and weaknesses. The transcripts from the Agora were much better to read with eyeballs but the narrator definitely added some tension and emotion during the more intense scenes.

If you're a lover of The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, you'll very likely want to read this.