The Little Girl in the Window - C.G. Twiles - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: C.G.Twiles

GENRE: Psychological Thriller

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A slow-burn somewhat-psych thriller. Entertaining but farfetched. Overall, mixed feelings.

Story Synopsis:

Twelve years ago, Romy Renskler inadvertently caused the death of the school prom queen when a prank created in a fit of jealousy went haywire. However, no one suspected Romy of being involved.

Now, Romy is a successful digital graphic designer living in NYC when the pandemic forces her to return to her hometown. In a bizarre turn of events, she begins a relationship with the man who was the last boyfriend of the prom queen, but he too knows nothing about Romy’s role in his girlfriend’s death.

When a mysterious little girl starts appearing in Romy’s window in the middle of the night and shouting insults at her, Romy wonders if she is losing her mind, or does someone who has stumbled upon her secret want to spook her?

The story comes to us in the limited third person perspective of Romy.

Mixed feelings almost all the way:

✔ The book is quite fast-paced and can be easily completed within a few hours.

❌ Conversely, the thrills in the book are quite slow-burn. A major chunk of the content is devoted to the drama than to the psych elements.

✔ I loved the way the pandemic was woven into the narrative. Right from lockdowns to panic buying to social distancing, the narrative felt real without going over the top.

❌ No negatives in this point for me, but I guess not everyone wants to read a book with covid yet. Still a bit too soon?

✔ Always love a story with a great dog. Mack the pitbull gets very few scenes but when he has to shine, he does!

✔ There is a steady supply of twists and turns. A few are good.

❌ Some of the twists are guessable, some highly exaggerated. Romy’s guesswork also seems farfetched many times.

✔ The characters are tricky to pinpoint. There are enough clues to highlight different aspects of a character such that categorising them into slots becomes tricky.

❌ Guessing the main culprit is quite easy if you are an avid thriller reader.

Two points related to the most common tropes in thrillers nowadays:

✔ There are some mysterious dark woods in the story, and these are wonderfully used.

❌ There is a dead phone in the plot. Never a fan of this trope!

✔ Love the creepy cover and the title! The girl in the window is the only eerie element in the story, but a good one.

❌ Her scenes are far and few between. Giving her the titular role made me assume that there would be more of her in the plot. This is what reduced the thrill factor of the story.

(I know that the author is working on a companion novel to this book, titled 'The Little Girl with a Secret'. Maybe that will help flesh her out more in our minds.)

✔ Romy’s character is an interesting one, and as we see things only from her point of view, she makes for a good narrator. I like how she took initiative throughout, instead of letting things happen to her.

❌ I didn’t like Romy’s musings about Avery going into the physical. Though only for a few scenes, it didn’t fit in with her character.

I picked this up mainly because I had loved a short story by this author. This novel did offer me enough entertainment to be able to blitz through it in a day, but as I was expecting a greater psych experience, it ended up being only a good instead of a great read for me. 

You might enjoy this more if you read it as a suspense-drama than as a psych thriller.