Thriller Time! I read The Woman in the Window and now I no longer trust my neighbours

As a single, lonely woman who lives on her own in a big house with a slightly estranged tenant and a family that doesn’t seem to want her around, Anna passes her days playing online chess, drinking copious amounts of wine, spying on the neighbours, and chatting with people in an online mental health forum. Everything passes by the same every day, locked in her house until she sees something happen with her new neighbours, something she should never have seen. As her calm, boring life spirals out of control, she becomes the “crazy” woman who has hallucinations about her neighbours. The cops don’t believe her because of her illness, and no one else even knows the neighbours well enough to find anything strange going on.

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Thrillers. Not my usual cup of tea to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, I love suspense and fear and that “edge of your seat” feeling and it’s definitely the type of book to get you out of a reading slump. But thrillers are usually so choppy to me and then I get too freaked out to read it at night because I’m a scaredy cat so the times I can actually escape into the story are limited. This book, in particular, made me extremely paranoid of all my neighbours for a little while. Is the lady down the hall a murderer? Who knows? Not me that’s for sure.

Whether or not thrillers are my thing, I did end up enjoying this book. I’d only read it as a recommendation from a friend at work. The only bad thing is that she lent it to me and it took me forever to get around to reading it so I’ve had this book, that’s not mine, for almost 4 months now. I’d kill if someone had my book for that long so shout out to that friend for her patience with me!

I liked that this book had such a focus on mental illness and really tried to illustrate how hard it is to live with one. Especially one so debilitating that the character can’t even go outside. Anna has been stuck in her house for nearly a year after an accident that left her afraid of open spaces. Reading this book made me feel shut in, itching to escape my own skin, only good writing can make you feel that uncomfortable. The actions that Anna had to take to protect herself highlighted the fact that many people don’t take mental illnesses seriously and write it off as “crazy”. Even the police in this book just chalked up what she saw and experienced as hallucinations.

There was also a major twist halfway through the book that I did not expect, and I’m usually pretty good at guessing what happens so that’s another point in this book's favour. Some of the twists snuck up on me as well as they were laid out so easily and subtly that you had no idea they were MAJOR plot points until it was too late. So pay attention!!

Some things I didn’t like? Anna’s “subtle” alcoholism, her relationship with her tenant, her relationship with the neighbours' son, and how fast the ending was resolved. So let’s start at the top:

• The main character starts the book off by having a few glasses of wine here and there; it becomes more of a common theme. Then she starts drinking multiple bottles by herself at night, then in the morning. She starts getting hammered nearly every night and washing down her medication with wine when the two shouldn’t even be mixed. This all highlights the fact that she isn’t dealing well with what life has dealt her but, even though it’s alluded to that she has a problem with alcohol, it’s never fully confronted as something that she needs to fix. It’s just “her way” of coping. If you make your character an alcoholic you can’t just resolve the book and say everything gets better without addressing that major problem.

• Anna’s relationships are pretty problematic too. Her tenant helps keep the house from falling into total disrepair but they rarely speak. Yet she is way too nosy into his love life, keeping tabs on when he has a woman over. She even breaks into his apartment at some point. I’ve lived with someone who thought it was their right to come into my space because they owned the apartment but that’s not right. Without proper notice, all that is is a major invasion of privacy and it’s not ok. She also begins to cross some very solid lines in their landlord/tenant relationship. Never a good idea.

• Another issue was her “relationship” with Ethan from across the street. Anna used to be a therapist for children. She’s good with them and good at sussing out the issue. When she meets the Ethan she notices immediately that he’s shy, uncomfortable, and possibly abused. So she steps in. But the problem is, she isn’t his doctor and she gets way too involved in his life. She doesn’t report that she feels he is being abused but tries to take care of it herself. Again, drawing on my own life experience as someone who has worked with children LOTS over the years, her behaviour towards Ethan raises all kinds of red flags. It’s not her intention to do anything but help him, but handing an underaged kid a key to your house so he can come by whenever he wants is pretty sketchy.

• Then the ending. There was so much build-up, which is common in thrillers, but it just seemed like the ending only took two seconds to be resolved and it wasn’t as climactic as I expected. The book was great but the ending just left me feeling a little bit disappointed once it was over. I expected more.

All in all, I probably wouldn’t reread this book, just because rereading a thriller is pretty hard. It’s not the same when you know what’s going to happen so it won’t hook you in the way it did. Another reason I don’t usually read thrillers.

It was a great book and definitely kept me guessing and I really enjoyed it but I feel like it’s one of those “one-time things”. If you’re in a slump, like I was, this book is really great for forcing you to keep reading because you need to know what happens! Even if you’re a scaredy cat like me, pick it up and read it!

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I’m giving it 3 stars as it was an exciting read but I also have lots of issue with the choppiness of thrillers and I wasn’t a big fan of Anna’s character.