Scan barcode
A review by emsager190
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
1.0
This may be a harsh rating, but I had such a hard time finishing this book for a number of reasons. I tried to read this book a few years ago and it didn’t hook me in right away. I gave it a second chance this year and unfortunately it was a huge disappointment.
First of all, I wanna say that I think thrillers are difficult to write well. They usually overlap tropes and recycle plot twists, so it really comes down to the author’s distinct voice and how they decide to tell their story.
With that said, this was the most BORING thriller I have ever read. The first 150ish pages were quite literally the main character wandering around drunk, and that’s about it. The book could have been way shorter, because the actual plot doesn’t start until about halfway in.
On top of this, I didn’t care about a single character. The main character somehow bored and annoyed me at the same time the entire book, and that’s not really something you want when you’re reading a thriller that puts the main character’s life in peril. Like I literally didn’t care: about her husband and her child, about her questioning her own sanity, about. Literally. ANYTHING.
Like I said earlier, many thrillers are recycled plots. But oh my god… This book actually stole the premises of many well-known thriller movies, which made it extremely predictable and unfortunately, unoriginal. One of the movies that seemed most prominent was Hitchcock’s movie “Rear Window”, which, if you look up the premise, is basically this book but better. Almost every single plot twist fell flat because I already knew where the story was going, which, if this were not a boring book to read already, I usually wouldn’t mind. It bothered me so much that the author assumed that if she mentioned a few old films here and there, that would cover for her completely ripping off old films.
Speaking of the author, I found her writing to be obnoxious and distracting to the story. She rewrote the same lines over and over again but it was like she tried to replace words with the nearest thesaurus she found lying around. This book seemed like she just googled “mental illnesses” and copied and pasted the definitions into her half-baked book. I felt like she was not qualified or researched enough to dive into such a complex topic.
I think this thriller is for a younger audience who has never seen or read an intense thriller before, and wants to dip their toe into the genre. I personally found it exhausting and tedious, but maybe it just wasn’t for me.
First of all, I wanna say that I think thrillers are difficult to write well. They usually overlap tropes and recycle plot twists, so it really comes down to the author’s distinct voice and how they decide to tell their story.
With that said, this was the most BORING thriller I have ever read. The first 150ish pages were quite literally the main character wandering around drunk, and that’s about it. The book could have been way shorter, because the actual plot doesn’t start until about halfway in.
On top of this, I didn’t care about a single character. The main character somehow bored and annoyed me at the same time the entire book, and that’s not really something you want when you’re reading a thriller that puts the main character’s life in peril. Like I literally didn’t care: about her husband and her child, about her questioning her own sanity, about. Literally. ANYTHING.
Like I said earlier, many thrillers are recycled plots. But oh my god… This book actually stole the premises of many well-known thriller movies, which made it extremely predictable and unfortunately, unoriginal. One of the movies that seemed most prominent was Hitchcock’s movie “Rear Window”, which, if you look up the premise, is basically this book but better. Almost every single plot twist fell flat because I already knew where the story was going, which, if this were not a boring book to read already, I usually wouldn’t mind. It bothered me so much that the author assumed that if she mentioned a few old films here and there, that would cover for her completely ripping off old films.
Speaking of the author, I found her writing to be obnoxious and distracting to the story. She rewrote the same lines over and over again but it was like she tried to replace words with the nearest thesaurus she found lying around. This book seemed like she just googled “mental illnesses” and copied and pasted the definitions into her half-baked book. I felt like she was not qualified or researched enough to dive into such a complex topic.
I think this thriller is for a younger audience who has never seen or read an intense thriller before, and wants to dip their toe into the genre. I personally found it exhausting and tedious, but maybe it just wasn’t for me.