The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn is basically a modernization (or dare I say a knockoff) of Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. At times, I thought she was taking too much from Hitchcock, so this book made me question the thin line between taking inspiration and copying. But that was really the only bone to pick I had with the novel.
Let’s just take a look at how the plot of the novel matches Hitchcock’s films (number 7 is a definite spoiler [and maybe #6], so skip that one if you haven’t read the book yet):
1) Protagonist is house-bound by illness. In Hitchcock, it’s physical, in the novel, it’s mental.
2) They occupy themselves through voyeurism: looking at their neighbors.
3) They both do this through the lens of a camera.
4) They both witness violence and the death of a woman through a window. (Granted, Jefferies in Rear Window didn’t actually see the murder.)
5) No one believes the protagonist when they report the murder, leaving them to investigate on their own.
6) The villain invades the protagonist’s home/apartment.
7) *Spoiler alert* The villain of the story falls to their death from the protagonist’s house.
But the protagonist, Anne, watched Hitchcock films every night, so A. J. Finn definitely wasn’t hiding her inspiration.
And the book was very well written. All of the characters and their development were definitely entirely Finn’s, and she had a couple of different twists that she built up very well. I did know every twist beforehand, but to be fair, I didn’t know the twist until maybe a chapter or two before its reveal, so it wasn’t totally predictable.
It was an enjoyable read, but wasn’t groundbreaking. I’d say it’s a good fanfiction of Rear Window, so it might be better for a Hitchcock fan if you knew that beforehand, instead of going into it expecting an entirely original story like I did (to the extent that anything can be “original”).
