A review by michellekernan
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

1.0

I found this to be long, slow and mostly boring. The main character really lacked any kind of personality other than a victim mentality. I have heard this described as a character driven story but the characters are all very basic and not interesting at all. Some of the characters are just there for the sack of being there it felt like, especially David. Why would a traumatised agoraphobe want to have someone living in her house and she clearly didn’t trust him, why wouldn’t she ask him to leave and why the actual fuck would she sleep with him. The female detective we meet is absolutely horrendous, what the heck that was all about is just beyond me. This author really can’t write women, just wow. There are two “twists” in the story and the first one is very predictable. Like, from chapter two so just waiting for that to be revealed felt like a slog. And then even when it was revealed, I just don’t get how people didn’t already know about that. Here’s this woman, confined to her house, after having gone through something that for sure would have been public knowledge and none of the neighbours thought to inform the Russel’s or David, please. The second twist was less predictable but still far from great. Probably one of the most boring “thrillers” I’ve ever read. I listened to the audio version, the performance was not good. It was very slow even at 2 x speed. I know for sure if I had read the physical version I would have DNFd for sure.