A bit long winded for my liking. It’s well written, and there’s even talk about the main character being an author, working as a freelancer checking other author’s manuscripts, but I still found this story going nowhere and lost interest very early on. I could have kept reading, but didn’t see the point. There are other more interesting books to be using up my precious time

Went into this excited for a new thriller. However, it took me a while to get into the story. Lots of detail, more than needed that caused the story not to grasp me. Had a lot of potential, just wasn't there for me.

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by AmazonCrossing on September 18, 2018

The Watcher, like many other thrillers built on domestic drama, is the story of people who seem to be behaving badly. This one is a bit different in that it challenges the reader to decide whether the primary narrator is perceiving and interpreting unfolding events accurately. Unfortunately, the novel’s resolution is not as interesting as its setup.

Elena is the author of a successful thriller who hasn’t written a word in two years. She is separated from her husband Peter and spends her time moping and gazing out the window rather than living, although she tells us that she’s always been more an observer of life than a participant. Most of the novel is narrated from Elena’s point of view, although some chapters are told from the perspective of an unfaithful husband and some from the point of view of a woman who plans to kill her husband.

Considering how much drama she has in her own life, it can’t be healthy for Elena to take on another family’s drama. Yet alone in her home, Elena becomes obsessed with the neighbors across the street who seem to be having (to put it gently) domestic problems. Through Google, she learns that they are Philip and Veronica Storm. She soon meets their son, a young teen named Leo, who wants to be a writer. Leo seems eager to strike up a friendship and Elena, listening to his stories about his parents, seems to sense a source of material she can use to make her own stories.

Elena’s curiosity and snooping — where does Leo’s mother go during the days when she’s supposedly lying in bed? what is Leo's father saying to the woman he's apparently meeting on the sly? why is there a knife under the Storms' marital bed? — leads her to fear that something bad will happen. Can she do anything to prevent it? Should she do anything, given that her suspicions may be unfounded and, in any event, result from invading the privacy of Leo’s family? She fears, with good reason, that anyone to whom she voices her suspicion will question her mental health. The reader might do the same when Elena starts to wonder whether the novel she is writing is in some way influencing the actions of her neighbors.

One of the novel’s pleasures, in fact, is the challenge that the reader faces in deciding whether Elena is just too unbalanced to have a reliable perception of events. Maybe someone is in danger. Maybe Elena is imagining the danger, creating a greater drama than the evidence supports. Caroline Eriksson builds suspicion that the danger might not involve Philip or Veronica but a secondary character, like Peter or Elena’s sister, both of whom play tangential roles for much of the story.

While most of the novel is told from Elena’s perspective, occasional passages are narrated by two unnamed characters. Again, the reader makes assumptions about who those narrators might be, but those assumptions must be reconsidered as the story progresses. Eriksson’s deft misdirection and her reliance on a potentially unreliable narrator are the novel’s virtues.

At the same time, while the novel builds to a surprising moment, the ending seems a bit tame, given the dramatic buildup. My reaction was more “huh” than “wow.” The final pages are determinedly optimistic, as if Eriksson thought it was important to let the reader know that Elena is a strong woman and that there’s no need to worry about another critical character. That seems like a betrayal of the darkness the precedes those pages. There’s also a message in the final paragraph that comes across as a writer force-feeding a dish of self-help to the reader. So while The Watcher has its rewards, it also comes with a bit of disappointment at the end.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Elena is an author that has recently separated from her husband. She has moved into a new place but lacks any motivation to unpack much less write anything. Her appetite is non-existent and her days and nights begin blending together as she struggles with insomnia.

One morning as she sits at her kitchen table she notices her neighbors across the way going about their business. She becomes obsessed with watching this family while also striking up a friendship with their 14 year old son.

She finally feels inspired to begin writing again and she sure does have a wicked story to tell.

That's it! That's all I can say! This needs to remain as vague as possible because it could easily be spoiled.

I read Caroline Eriksson's book The Missing and really enjoyed it while other reviewers seemed to detest it. Why it worked for me I have no idea but it did and this one was no different. This lady knows how to spin your head around. The entire time I was reading this book, and like with her other book, I kept asking myself what in the hell is going on and I was unable to put this book down until I found out. Well played, Ms. Erikkson!

Thank you to NetGalley and AmazonCrossing for proving me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Watcher by Caroline Eriksson is a quick and captivating read!

Unreliable narrator alert! Love them! Elena is an author that is newly separated from her husband and is now living on her own in a new neighborhood. She finds herself intrigued by her neighbors across the street, the Storm family. As she watches them she becomes more and more curious as to what is going on behind closed doors. Adding to her already suspicious thoughts is the Storm's son, Leo, who wants to be a writer and has befriended Elena. Leo has some stories to tell about his family and Elena's need for inspiration drives her to listen to them intently and fill in the blank spaces on her own. As she begins to write her novel, the lines between reality and fiction become blurred and soon she can't be sure if her paranoia is justified or if she is slipping into a state of insanity.

I loved Elena. I loved her introspection, nurturing traits and her intelligence. I found her to be a very well developed and relatable protagonist. I enjoyed the friendship with Leo and found her relationship with her sister to be so heartwarming! I would love to see more of her, what happens next in her life!

The Watcher is an intense book than will keep the pages open and flipping! I didn't have my 'AHA moment' until right when the twist was revealed which is the way every good book should be. I thoroughly enjoyed every word!

Special thanks to Netgalley and AmazonCrossing for an opportunity to read and review The Watcher.

The Watcher by Caroline Eriksson is a recommended "Rear Window"-esque Scandinavian thriller translated into English by Tara F. Chace.

Elena has left her husband Peter during a trial separation and has moved into a subleased townhouse. She's obviously distraught, unsettled, and unable to sleep or unpack. Her sister is trying to help her with regular Friday night dinners and checking up on her. Elena, an author, spends sleepless nights rearranging books in the bookcase. She is also watching her neighbors through the kitchen window. She discovers they are the Storm family, husband, wife, and teenage son, Leo. Soon she thinks something nefarious is happening between the Storms, and Leo, who is stopping by her house to talk to her, is increasing her anxiety about them. She is sure she is witnessing a marriage disintegrating and suspects murder may soon happen. Her watching is also spurring on her creativity, though, and she is beginning to write a new novel. Soon her writing is at a frenzied pitch and something must be coming to a deadly conclusion in both her novel and the neighbors marriage.

The plot unfolds mainly through chapters from Elena's point-of-view, but there are also chapters from the Husband's point-of-view and excerpts from the book Elena is writing. At first it is difficult to see what is real and unreal. The connection between the separate narratives is tenuous and the relevance of their inclusion is unclear, but the correlation becomes more coherent as the plot unfolds. The ending brings clarity to all the narrative threads.

It is an interesting novel and a quick read, although the plot is not unique and the outcome is not unexpected. There are a few plot points that were never completely resolved and I wish they were since they were an ongoing part of the narrative. Elena clearly is unstable and is an unreliable narrator, but this isn't handled quite as successfully in this novel as compared to other recent novels that have utilized this technique. If you enjoyed The Women in the Window, you might want to give The Watcher a try.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Amazon Publishing via Netgalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/09/the-watcher.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2536832569
https://www.librarything.com/work/22143360/book/160616175
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1042884186716209152

A woman carrying a lot of angst. Separated from her husband, not sleeping, not eating and seeing strange goings on at the house opposite her temporary, rented home. She's a writer, whose not written anything for a while, but the son of the house opposite tells her of more strange happenings at home and she's fired up to write it all down.

She's obsessed with the family - can she intervene and save a life?

Elena is in the middle of a separation with her husband, Peter. She desperately wants him back and is depressed. Her sister is trying to make sure Elena keeps her head above water but Elena is making it difficult. With a history of anorexia, her sister is very worried about her.

Her new neighbor’s son loves reading and has found out that Elena is an author. He begins to come over almost daily and confides to her about his home life. Elena can’t help but worry and/or wonder about her new neighbors. It is easy to find things going wrong in other’s lives when yours isn’t so great. She begins to write and blocking everyone out. She does still enjoy peeking into the neighbor’s lives and maybe even writing about what she is imagining is going on. Between what Leo tells her and what she sees, she thinks she has it all figured out. She even tries to stop Leo’s mom from making a huge mistake.

Is it Veronica’s mistake or her own that she is trying to stop?

The truth and fiction all start to run together which makes the ending awesome!!!!

This book has the best twist I have read since Behind Her Eyes. Now, it is nowhere as twisted as Behind Her Eyes (I don’t think anyone can come up with something to top that) but I am very glad I stuck with it and I am very appreciative of Netgalley allowing me to read this ARC. Be sure and pick up a copy of this book on Amazon on September 18, 2018.

This was a pretty good and quick read especially if you're on a flight and need some entertainment. The twist wasn't too crazy and easy to figure out about halfway through the book.

The Scandanavian version of Woman in the Window, which was far better. Elena, a writer who has left her husband, is the epitome of the unreliable narrator. This was a tad confusing in the beginning but it evened out and then, I realized, I'd read the plot before. I DNF. Thanks to net galley for the ARC. Three stars to the publisher for bringing translated books to English.

An interesting character study lies at the heart of this translated thriller with more than a hint of Rear Window. Paranoia, jealousy and obsession are all features of the book, which tells the story of several relationships in distress. While there is nothing really wrong with the book, nothing stands out from the usual in the genre, making it difficult to rate this any higher than 3 stars. While I understand that some of the obfuscation about the various points of view used to tell the story is deliberate, I do not think that it succeeds as it is quite obvious where the story is headed,
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher.

A Swedish version of RARE WINDOW, or THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW with the protagonist who's a writer this time.

It's certainly more melancholic. Scenes on your own E-reader blur at times when it gets harder and harder to tell what the protagonist actually sees and what she imagines to be her fictitious story.

Elena is a writer who is newly separated from her husband and is having a hard time focusing on anything or remembering to take care of herself. She’s renting a house and has become a shut-in, not even unpacking and becoming more and more unbalanced. Elena soon finds herself watching the neighbors across the street and finding out all their dirty secrets. She becomes a stalker of the family and follows them throughout their daily activities and befriends their only son. All this inspires her to start writing again, as she takes pieces of this families life to weave a new tale.

I enjoyed the way this book starts out and how we don’t find out exactly why Elena and her husband have separated. I enjoyed that Elena was unstable in this novel so you didn’t really know if you could trust her side of what she was seeing. I love an unreliable narrator. I liked that the chapters went back and forth between Elena and the husband. I found this novel just the right pace to keep me interested and I didn’t want to put it down because I wanted to know what exactly was going on and which person was lying. Nothing is as it seems in this novel and the less I say, the more surprised you are when the whole picture starts to form on both Elena and the Storm’s lives.

I liked the relationship between Leo, the Storm’s son and Elena too because I feel like they both needed it and it helped Elena find out things she wouldn’t have any other way. This book reminded me of The Women in the Window a little bit, but the twists are completely different and I loved the different perspectives in this novel, meant to allow you to see what else is going on. I would recommend this is you enjoyed The Women in the Window!

Look for it on September 18th!

I found this a little hard to persevere with, and saw the 'twist' coming very early on. I realise that it's a psychological drama but found the settings vague and hard to picture, and the characters were not fully drawn out. Perhaps something was lost in translation?
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

Elena has separated from her husband and takes a short term townhouse rental to allow her time to decide what she wants to do with respect to her marriage. She is an author but has been suffering from writer’s block. Instead of working on a new novel, she begins to watch her neighbors through the kitchen window and she believes that something is terribly wrong with them. This is another unreliable narrator plot but unfortunately it really wasn’t my kind of book. This may appeal to readers who really enjoy unreliable narrators/story lines.

Although I'm a huge fan flawed characters and unreliable narrators, perhaps I've just read too many of them in a row because this one was a little too confusing. It's clear from the beginning that Elena is somehow unhinged because of her recent separation from her husband; her sister worries about her constantly and Elena is often unfocused and vague about what she's doing. But she becomes increasingly interested in her neighbors as she can see in their window (think Rear Window meets The Woman in the Window) and witnesses some odd events. These events begin to inspire her writing and she finishes her novel in record time. But what's the line between fantasy and reality? It's not clear until the end and even then, I wasn't entirely satisfied. I don't think it's the author's fault; I think it's me...not the book this time.

A decent suspense mystery. Definitely worth a shot. Very unique plot, enjoyable reading. The ending was a surprise, too.

A slow read for a Swedish psychological thriller! It all takes place in the lead character’s mind so it’s very claustrophobic and unsettlingas you never know what really is going on.

The book sets the scene well with the isolation, the house, the boredom and the imagination of a writer looking for her next plot. There’s a little bit of nosiness in all of us I think so to have someone watch the house next door makes sense.

The novel takes off as it were, when the woman starts to discover more and the pace picks up. What took away the pace here though was the alternation view points which up until now hadn’t bothered me. It mirror the thought process here I suppose but I wanted to feel the full impact of the ending.

There’s no locations of interest but just as well as I wouldn’t want to meet any of the people in the novel!

This is a copy provided by the publisher and the author in exchange of an honest review. Thank you to them!

This was a book full of surprises!

What captivated me in this book was the plot itself, how Elena would deal with the paranoia of observing her neighbors and what she would develop going forward in history. But when I started reading it I thought the story was a bit boring and very repetitive, making Elena a very fickle character with a little atypical actions of her personality, in a really short period of time. It serves as an example of how she reacted, almost unintentionally, when she contacted the Storms, her neighbors, and how her actions became too unconscious.

As the reading flows, I have been able to understand some of Elena’s attitudes and the way she has developed in this narrative. I can tell you that the reasons that came out were nothing of what I was expecting, and so the development of the story equally surprised me.

Themes such as bullying and family ties have proved to be constant in this narrative and it was through them that the main character retains in the midst of paranoia and the loss of its course, in a connection so creative and dense that Caroline presents.

It is undoubtedly a book that we must move away from and gather all the pieces, as the author constantly refers in her writing, and then raise the conclusions of dimensions much deeper than I was expecting. And that was the highest point of this book, the ability to look from different perspectives the course of this woman, Elena.

I recommend to anyone who wants to dare a challenging reading.

Happy readings,

Next to a Book.

on my blog: https://nexttoabook.wordpress.com/2018/08/13/review-of-the-watcher-by-caroline-eriksson/

This was a hard book to get through because Caroline used each character to give an impression that what was happening really did happen. After saying that I feel like I am spoiling the story for you to read. As you read Elena is an author that is watching her neighbors through her window making assumptions about them. They have a 14 year old boy, Leo, that also wants to be an author. His problems become Elena's, because he comes home from school without shoe's, or his door key. She need to write something as a story and this seems to be the ticket. Things take a drastic change when she follows Veronica when she goes off with two suitcases. I'll leave it at that so you can get into the story. You'll not regret it.