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3 STARS
You don't know how happy I was to get my greedy little paws on both the audio and Kindle versions of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. My expectations were through the roof! Have you seen all those 5 star reviews?

As it turns out, the book doesn't live up to the hype. Yes, it is as addictive as popcorn, I couldn't put it down. But, there are so many disappointing drawbacks that I couldn't rate it a 4 star read.

For audio-lovers, do not waste your precious Audible credit on this one. It is absolute trash. The actress portraying our boozy, traumatized victim/narrator is chirpy and confident sounding. Talk about a mindf*k! It does not work. In contrast, a similar book, The Girl on the Train is sheer perfection on audio.

At about 40%, I turned off the audio, opened my Kindle and aaaaahhhh...the world made sense again. You know how much I love my unreliable narrators and our girl, Anna, is a doozy. Although she is terrified to step outside of her home, all kinds of interesting events still manage to take place in her small neighborhood. She spies on the nearby residents out of boredom. She's a regular Gladys Kravitz (you know, from Bewitched?). We can't trust Anna's narration because she is depressed and suffering from a traumatic event. And she pops a lot of pills and glugs wine as a chaser. Yeah, her take on the neighbors is suspect at best.

All this is great. Absorbing. But, you know those people that use too many words and make simple matters overly boring? AJ Finn is one of those kind of writers. My patience runs thin with passages like this:

Frigid air seizes my body, so raw that my heart feels faint; storms my clothes, sets them trembling around me. My ears brim with the sound of wind. I'm filling up with cold, running over with cold.

Ugggghhhhh. I think she's cold.

The book is so long and repetitive. It has an interesting, yet heavily borrowed upon plot and there are a couple of major twists. The plot twists are predictable, you will see them from a mile away, but it is still fun to see if your hunches were right (they will be).

Just one more thing. Finn shoves a ton of film references into the storyline. At first, I loved it. Then, it becomes too much. It's as if he's saying, "I'm not borrowing plot lines, I'm just referencing them." Wink-wink. It's all too heavy handed and cutesy, we know what's really going on. There is not a single original concept about this book. Ultimately, underwhelming.