Today I'm grumpy because the noir-inspired The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn had tons of references to classic movies and I don't think I've seen a single one of them.
I'm not a movie person. I feel... well, I guess uncultured is the word, although that's not the most precise way to describe, but I do feel something like uncultured when I admit I'm not a movie person. I enjoy movies, and I appreciate the craft of film-making, but that's it. I just basically like them. Don't really go see them that often, and typically don't enjoy them quite as much as I enjoy other media. (I don't know if you noticed... But I'm kind of a book person.) I bring this up because Anna Fox, the protagonist of The Woman in the Window, loves movies, spends a great deal of her time watching movies, uses movies to help contextualize things, and there's a decent chunk of time spent in text just talking about all the old movies she knows. (Did you want a list of all the movies mentioned in the novel? Because I made one here.)
I went into The Woman in the Window with low expectations. Probably because the title is another in the long list of recent, similar titles, and I was feeling a little burnt out. Well, first mistake: because the title is actually from a 1944 movie. I read it and I liked it more than I expected to. The writing was engaging and I liked the protagonist, though I did find it slightly predictable. I will add a caveat to that to say that I still thought it was plotted well and the clues were laid out nicely leading towards the end. The middle dragged a bit, and the ending can be a big hit or miss depending on the reader I think - it was surprising, and some I think will enjoy the twist, though some will probably feel a bit like "Wait what? Really?"
I enjoyed it. Three stars. It's gotten enough buzz that a movie starring Amy Adams is coming out next year so if you don't feel like waiting for that, pick this up and have a read!
"Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems."
As I was reading, I was kind of reminded of another book that came out relatively recently (in early 2017 I believe). Both books are suspenseful and tense, they have unreliable narrators (telling the story in first person POV), there are intricate twisty plots, and both novels feature women coping with past trauma. So if you enjoyed The Woman in the Window, I definitely think you would like Final Girls by Riley Sager.
"Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls: Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
That is until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit; and Sam, the second Final Girl, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished."
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