Bookish Thoughts: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Her husband's almost home. ~ Opening of The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

William Morrow, 2018

Crime Fiction (Thriller); 448 pgs

Source: Review copy provided by publisher via Edelweiss for an honest review.

Doctor Anna Fox lives alone in Harlem, never venturing outside its walls. It is her safe haven. Anxiety and agoraphobia plague Anna, and so she has found ways to cope as best she can. Her food is delivered. Her basement tenant is a handyman, who helps her around the house when needed. Her physical therapist and psychiatrist meet her at her home. Hiding from the outside and her past, Anna finds comfort in medication and alcohol, and also in watching her neighbors through her windows. She knows their habits and many of their secrets.

When a new family moves in across the park, Anna’s safe but dysfunctional world is rocked. In a drunken haze, she witnesses a terrible crime through the window of the neighbor’s home. Did she really see what she thinks she saw? Or was it just a hallucination?

A.J. Finn takes readers into the mind of Dr. Anna Fox as she grapples with her own illness. The reader knows right from the start Anna is an unreliable narrator. And it had me questioning her take on everything at every turn. There were certain aspects of the novel I figured out right away while others came as a surprise. I liked the way Finn kept me guessing—and glued to the pages of the book. I just had to know. What was real? What was imagined? What was going to happen next?

As someone who experiences anxiety issues and with my background in psychology, I was especially drawn to Anna’s character and the portrayal of her mental illness. Anna herself is a child psychologist, which I thought was genius on the author’s part. It adds a more complex layer to Anna’s character and situation. Anna is very isolated, cut off from just about everyone. She has her online support group, as well as her tenant, physical therapist and psychiatrist, but, really, that’s it. Her fear of leaving her house is palatable. Maybe because I know something about panic attacks from personal experience, I felt her rising anxiety acutely several times throughout the novel.

The Woman in the Window has been described as Hitchcockian for good reason. Anna is a lover of Hitchcock’s films, and there is almost always one playing in the background. It adds to the atmosphere of the novel, which itself is very like a Hitchcock film.

It takes me a couple pages to fall into Anna’s narrative, but once I did, I was hooked. I thoroughly enjoyed The Woman in the Window, and hope you will too.

To learn more about A.J. Finn and his book, please visit the author on Goodreads, Instagram, and Twitter.

---

© 2018, Musings of a Bookish Kitty. All Rights Reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Musings of a Bookish Kitty or Wendy's feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.