The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn Book Summary
The Woman in the Window is about an interesting main character in New York City who can’t leave her house and spies on her neighbors through the windows. When a seemingly perfect new family moves in nearby, the woman thinks she sees something terrible happen in the house. But she’ll have a hard time convincing anyone when she’s got a serious mental illness and evidence mounting against her.
A.J. Finn’s thriller novel is full of shocking secrets and a couple of major twists that keep you guessing right up until the very end. The writing style and short chapters are great for this type of thriller to get you on the edge of your seat. If you’re looking for a new book that will for sure keep you reading, try this best-selling novel.
This enthralling book is full of plot twists that are only amplified by the unreliable narrator. Here’s a brief summary of the main points of the book to help you better remember and understand for my full book review here.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Chapters 1-5
Dr. Anna Fox sits in her house watching her neighbors with her camera. She’s seen neighbors cheating, book clubs, kids practicing instruments, and now new neighbors moving in. Anna lives alone as her husband Ed and their young daughter, Olivia, moved to new house in Midtown that they are renovating after the two separated last year.
Anna spends her time playing online chess, talking to Ed and Olivia on the phone, watching old movies, and spying on the five neighbors through her rear window: The Miller couple, the Wasserman couple, the Gray family, and the Takeda family. There’s also an empty house owned by an LLC, and east of her house is a boarded up Catholic school. West of her house is the park where the new Russell family moved in, according to an online search, who look like the perfect family.
Anna never leaves her house, and everything is delivered. Besides her doctors that come, she only sees the tenant from the basement, David, who recently moved in from Boston and helps do things for her in exchange for lower rent.
Chapters 6-10
Anna is a former child psychologist with severe agoraphobia who has only left the house into the backyard a few times in the last ten months. She talks to others on a website for people with agoraphobia and to a therapist who’s helping her take a few steps outside with her secret weapon: an umbrella.
One day, Ethan Russell brings a present for Anna, and she actually invites him in. He tells her that he’s homeschooled, in a swim league, and really missing his life in Boston. It makes Anna miss her old patients, but she’s really enjoying talking with him, and even lets him borrow one of her favorite old black and white films.
Chapters 11-15
On Halloween, kids start egging her house, and it makes Anna so mad that she tries to go out and confront them. After opening the front door, she passed out from a panic attack, and Jane Russell, Ethan’s mom, helps her inside as she’s passing by. Jane is friendly and chatty, and Anna tells her about her condition.
The next day, she asks David, to look at a spot of water damage on the ceiling. He goes up to the overgrown garden roof to check it out and says he’ll call a professional to seal the roof.
Chapters 16-20
Anna meets with her psychologist Dr. Fielding at the house and tells him about bickering with Ed on the phone about Olivia, dealing with the egging, and helping others with her condition on Agora, the online forum. At the end of their session, he tells her they’re going to up one of her main prescription drugs even though it makes her brain feel fuzzy. As she’s looking out the window at the friends, Jane Russell sees her and waves.
Jane comes over with wine thinking Anna is lonely, and together they drink, play chess, talk a lot, eat chocolate, and tour the house. Later, Jane’s husband, Alistair, comes over to ask Anna if anyone was here with her earlier, but Anna says no. Anna got the feeling that Jane and Ethan are scared of Alistair and doesn’t want to get them in trouble.
Chapters 21-25
Anna hears two of Jane’s screams coming from the Russell house, so she calls the house. On the phone, Ethan says everything is fine without denying the screams before hanging up, but Anna doesn’t know what else to do besides call the house again. When Alistair answers, he denies any screaming and hangs up on her.
Later, she sees Jane leave the house, and then, Ethan comes to her door saying he just needed to get out of his house. He only stays a few minutes, and Anna doesn’t see any signs of abuse besides Ethan crying and being afraid of his house. Anna gives him her cell phone number.
Chapters 26-30
Anna started the heavier medication which is not supposed to be mixed with alcohol, but Anna drinks almost constantly while denying she has a drinking problem. In the shower, she finds she’s written Jane Russell in the steam over and over and puts it down to the new meds. The next day, she decides to put the Russells behind her because it’s too stimulating for her mental illness.
Online, she again consoles an agoraphobic woman from Montana, called Grannylizzie, who can’t go outside after her husband died. Anna finds Grannylizzie comforting and starts telling her about her own life. She starts telling her the story of when she separated from Ed right before a preplanned skiing vacation to Vermont, but they went anyways where he insisted they tell Olivia.
Chapters 31-35
Grannylizzie leaves the online chat without replying to Anna’s story. Later that night, after drinking two bottles of wine and taking some pills, Anna looks out the window to see Jane screaming at someone out of view. When Jane comes back in view of the window, she’s stabbed in the chest with something and blood is spreading across her shirt as Anna thinks that she sees Jane point her way.
Anna is moving slow because she’s drunk, but finally finds her phone and calls 911. Then, she sees Jane’s bloody hand reach up for the window, and she decides she needs to go help. With her umbrella, Anna slowly makes her way into the outside world and part way through the park before passing out.
Chapters 36-40
Anna wakes up in a hospital bed and has to be sedated for panic attacks because she’s not at home but has no physical injuries. Semiconscious, she wakes to a police detective, Detective Little, who is going to take her home and get her statement. After a tough ride home, Anna finally starts to feel better when she’s in her own home.
Little and his partner bring Alistair Russell over to Anna’s house who tells them that his wife is fine. Ethan enters the house with a woman Anna has never seen before, and Alistair introduces her as his wife, Jane. Ethan mumbles a confirmation but doesn’t look at Anna.
As the Russells leave, the detectives tell Anna she hallucinated the other lady from her medication and drinking.
Chapters 41-45
Anna is absolutely sure that Ethan was lying, and that the original Jane she met was real because she was seen dozens of times. She tries to explain all this to her physical therapist, who’s more of a friend now, who comes to her house to help. They both try to find any pictures of Jane Russell online but fail.
All of this causes Anna to keep drinking a lot even though she wants to stop, so she can think everything through better.
Chapters 46-50
Anna watches the Russell house and is going to take pictures with her camera when the new Jane sees her through the window. New Jane calls the house and leaves a message to stop spying on them.
Ed doesn’t believe Anna when she tells him about it on the phone. Then, Anna remembers David did some work for the Russells a few days ago, and she goes down to his basement apartment although he’s not there. He comes back extremely mad to find Anna in his apartment, but eventually tells her that he never saw Jane when he was over there.
Chapters 51-55
Anna talks online with Grannylizzie again whose internet went out the other day, but it reminds Anna of the rest of the story. When Anna and Ed tell Olivia that they are separating, she’s so upset she wants to go home immediately even though a snow storms coming. While Anna’s driving them home, she tries to stop Ed from answering her cell phone and drives off the road into a gorge.
Later, David comes up to apologize for getting so mad and ends up tells her that he did sometime in prison for fighting at a bar. They start drinking wine together, and the night ends with them sleeping together.
Chapters 56-60
Anna notices her utility closet door is cracked open and goes inside to find a returned box cutter that David borrowed the other day. Then, she starts thinking an earring she saw by David’s bed looks similar to the earrings Jane was wearing. Growing suspicious of David, she wedges a stepladder under the basement door.
Needing to do something, Anna calls Alistair’s office asking for his assistant only to be told he has worked there in a month. She calls his original office in Boston, and his old assistant confirms he was supposed to transfer to the New York office.
Anna asks about Jane, and the assistant has never met her, only seen an old photo. The description he gives could be either of the two Janes. As Anna is telling Ed all this on the phone later, she sees new Jane leave her house and decides she has to confront her.
Chapters 61-65
In the rain with her umbrella, Anna slowly makes her way down the street after new Jane. Most of the way she closes her eyes until she’s in the coffee shop new Jane entered. Inside, new Jane tells Anna to leave her alone, or she’s going to call the police.
The Takeda boy helps walk Anna home, and, outside the door, they run into Ethan who offers to take her inside. Inside her house, Anna peppers Ethan with questions about his mom and his lying, which causes him to leave in fear.
Detective Little calls to check in and asks Anna to leave the Russells alone after the new Jane called him. Later, she keeps trying and failing to get into her phone, so she has to reset the password through her computer.
Chapters 66-70
She dreams of when she woke up after the car accident with an unconscious Ed and Olivia and waited almost 36 hours in the open valley for someone to help them. Being stuck out in the open with no help is what triggered her agoraphobia.
When she wakes up, she gets an email from Jane Russell with a picture of herself sleeping taken at two in the morning. As she’s on the phone with Detective Little, she sees Ethan walking down the street and screams his name.
Chapters 71-75
Anna suddenly remembers a small portrait Jane drew of her and signed in a kitchen drawer. As she pulls out the drawing, Ethan comes to the door followed closely by the two detectives. One detective searches the house as she shows the other one the email and the portrait.
Both the detective and Ethan don’t believe her about the portrait, and the other detective thinks Anna sent the email to herself as well. Alistair shows up at her door to get Ethan followed closely by David who just got home.
After the police confirm that David wasn’t home last night, Detective Little finally tells Anna that he talked to Dr. Fielding on the phone who told him that Ed and Olivia died in the car crash. Everything comes crashing back to Anna who finally decides that she’s hallucinating the whole thing.
Chapters 76-80
Anna does little more than sleep the next two days and try to ignore the voices of Ed and Olivia. She calls her old business partner, Wesley, who she was having an affair with and who called her phone causing her to crash the car. Ed had found out about him and asked for the divorce.
On the phone, Wesley tells Anna he’s trying to put the whole thing behind him. David also tells Anna he’s moving out. She cancels all her appointments for the week.
Finally, Anna checks her own phone and finds the sleeping photo of herself on it. On her computer, the Gmail logs into the account that sent the photo even though she doesn’t remember any of it.
Chapters 81-85
Ethan comes over to check on her and talks to her about movies. Anna gives Ethan the key to basement in case he ever needs to get out of the house. The next day, she showers and gets dressed finally but starts drinking again. Suddenly, she thinks that maybe the woman she was with wasn’t Jane Russell at all but someone else.
Chapters 86-90
While she’s laying in bed that night, she hears glass breaking in the kitchen and goes downstairs, grabbing a box cutter on the way. She can’t find her phone to call anyone, and in the kitchen is Alistair who’s breaking glasses to get her to come downstairs. He found the basement key she gave to Ethan and threatens her to stay away from his family.
When she asks about the woman again, he grabs her by the neck, threatens her again, but then leaves. When she’s back in bed, she knows she can’t call the police because they think she’s crazy. And she’s looking at the photos on her phone, she sees a photo of the sunset she took the night Jane came over and sees the woman’s reflection in the photo.
Chapters 91–95
Anna calls Ethan on his cell phone to come over about something really important, and when he gets there, she shows him the photo. Ethan finally admits the woman is his biological mother who gave him up for adoption at five years old because she was on drugs. His biological mother, Katie, had found him before, but Alistair and Jane refused to let him see her.
Now, she had found out they moved to New York online and showed up at the house when Alister and Jane had gone back to Boston for the night to deal with things. That was the day Anna first met her. But when the Russells did come back, they were furious, and threatened to call the police.
Katie kept coming back to the house, and finally from his room Ethan heard them arguing. He came downstairs to find that Jane stabbed Katie with a letter opener.
Ethan agrees to go to the police, but wants to go home and give his parents a chance to turn themselves in first.
Ending
Anna wakes up to Ethan in her bedroom with a box cutter. He tells Anna he comes a lot at night after stealing a key to make a copy because he’s very interested in older women. He admits that his family had to leave Boston because he broke into Alistair’s boss’s house to see the wife. Anna realizes that Alistair was actually trying to protect her from Ethan.
Ethan has been coming around at night, and he’s the one who took Anna’s picture and sent the email. He also changed her password to make her think she was losing her mind. He admits to being GrannyLizzie online and using the information Anna gave out to figure out her passwords.
Ethan also admits that while the beginning of the story about Katie was true, he was the one who wanted her to leave. Katie wouldn’t tell him who his real dad was, so Ethan stabbed her in the argument. Anna tries to grab her cellphone, but Ethan has already changed the password and unplugged the house phones.
As he goes to grab her, Anna kicks out at him and runs away. He chases her through the house and eventually onto the roof. Anna ends pushing him onto an old skylight on the roof during the struggle that breaks underneath him.
Six Weeks Later
Alistair confessed to everything once the police came for Ethan’s body. Anna stayed living in her house. She got a specialist to stop drinking and has been taking a few steps outside each week with her therapists.
Read the Full Book Review
Now, read my full review of this thrilling story of Anna Fox here. I love a good murder mystery, so this one was a good read for me! I also have some recommendations of what to read next if you liked this story.
You can find the book here if you want to read it all again!
