Anna Fox is a child psychologist who is experiencing agoraphobia, leading her staying in the house for almost a year. Her daily routines in the home are watching a lot of classic black-and-white movies, drinking wines, and spying her neighbours' life through her Nikon camera. She lives alone after separated with her husband, and her eight-year-old daughter is with him.
A new family moves in and lives across the park. Their teenage son, Ethan, brings a candle to Anna as a gift from a new neighbour. Jane Russell, Ethan's mother, spends a lovely afternoon with her, playing chess, drinking wine and enjoying a great conversation with Anna. It's a perfect family, at least it looks it is from Anna's view.
One evening, Anna heard two screams from Russell's house. When she calls the Russells, Alistair denies the screams came from their home and David, her tenant didn't hear the scream as well. Jane Russell leaves the house thirty minutes after the scream. Ethan denies the scream on the phone but later comes over to apologise to her.
Then, one night, Anna sees Jane getting stabbed by someone through her window. She makes an emergency call to ask for help. She struggles to walk out from her house but tries her best to make it into Russell's doorsteps to save Jane, but she has a panic attack and collapses at the park.
When she returns to her house from the hospital, the police tells her that nothing happened to her neighbour. They assume she was in hallucination when she made the emergency call, the effect after taking the medicines and drinking the wine. However, Anna stands firm of what she saw, but Alistair Russell tells the police that his wife was out of town and Anna never meet her before. When Alistair calls his wife and son to come over, Anna is surprised that his wife is a different woman than whom she saw before.
Well, I have to rate this book based on what I feel about the story before I dig more about the author and his fraud scandal. It was a great story, although I didn't like the overly-descriptive writing style. It's a shame after I briefly read about the author's past. Also, there was a rumour that this book is strikingly similar to a novel by Sarah A. Denzil, Saving April. I can try to forego the author's personality or his past because I have to admit that I enjoyed reading this book before I knew about the author's history. However, plagiarism doesn't deserve a good rating no matter how great the story is, although I'm not sure whether the rumour is true.
Rating: ★★
More reviews can be found on Goodreads: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.