When I am not busy watching horror movies to review or writing, I like to read. A lot. This year, a friend and I have found a reading challenge we have decided to do together. One item on the list is to read a “novel that will get a movie adaptation in 2020.” I will spare you the details on how two bookworms wheedled down two needlessly long lists of books that we could read together; all you need to know is that we decided on The Woman in the Window by A.J. Flynn.
This book sucked us both in immediately so that we didn’t even discuss it until we were both finished. In the previous books we’ve read together, we would send each other messages about the chunk we had just read or random comments about characters irritating us. Not with this book. We just opened our copies and devoured the book until we were done.
If you can’t already tell, this book is pretty fast-paced. Even with the narrator, Dr. Anna Fox, not witnessing an important incident until later in the book, the reader gets pulled in and interested, needing to know why her husband and child do not live with her, what made her an agoraphobic, and simply being involved in her daily routine. I hate when people say this, but there are twists and turns in this novel that I really enjoyed. I did not see all of them coming and that is saying something. Dr. Fox is likeable enough though she can be irritating (it’s not her fault, it’s her disease, right?) and there did seem to be one glaring error/problem that I cannot go into details about without spoiling the book, but other than that, this book is a great read. The characters felt realistic and the dialogue was natural.
There were times when the story felt familiar, like something done before in movies like Rear Window, but those are mentioned in the novel, as Dr. Fox is a film fan, so it works. I have not seen a good amount of the films talked about in the book, but I’ve added them to my to-watch list. The Woman in the Window is set to be released in theaters on May 15th and I am eager to watch to see how faithful the film adaptation will be to the novel. I know that the book is almost always better, but I’m hopeful that this book can be adapted without being disappointing. I’m hoping to see it when it comes out, so stay tuned for my review of its translation to the big screen. In the meantime, go read the book.