London From My Windows

While not being the sort of book I would normally read, as a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window,' I was immediately drawn to the idea of a person watching the world go by from the confinement of her own home. This book turned out to be much more than that.

From the start of the book, the author has you empathising with Ava, the agoraphobic who has been that way since the untimely death of her father when she was a child. We get to understand why she has a strained relationship with her mother and why her home has become her sanctuary.

Although the topic is not a light-hearted one, the author manages to weave humour into the text and the scenario at the airport, in particular, is well-written. The only negative aspect of the book, for me, was the character of Vic. In a book full of likeable characters, this character remained the complete opposite throughout the story, to the point where I couldn't see a purpose for her character.

All in all, I feel that the author manages to display a positive approach to this 'hidden illness,' whilst demonstrating the trials an agoraphobic person faces on a daily basis.

A fun quick read about a girl with agoraphobia who is enticed out of her hometown with a London inheritance. Fun read highlighting hidden disabilities.

Ava is agoraphobic, unable to leave her Iowa home. When her estranged Aunt Beverly dies, she leaves Ava a flat in London provided she lives in the flat and accomplishes a list of tasks. While in London, she falls for a barrister who wants to be a comic, becomes friends with a group of drag queens, and has a series of unexpected experiences. Quirky but a delicate handling of an invisible disability, while providing a real feel of London, I loved this book. Highly recommend.

Ava Wilder lives a satisfying, if not exciting life in small town Iowa. An artist, she suffers from agoraphobia and draws the life she might live if she dared. Everything changes when she learns she has inherited the estate of her aunt Beverly in London. But the inheritance comes with conditions, one of them being that Ava must live in Beverly’s London flat for one year. Ava gamely agrees to the move, intending to have no more contact with the outside world than she had in Iowa. But it turns out that her aunt had a lot of unusual friends, who take to stopping by the flat at all hours, all of whom expect her to see the sights of London. Not to mention the handsome solicitor who has more and more conditions Ava has to follow in order to receive her inheritance. Can she overcome her fear and seize the future that’s waiting just out of her grasp? I loved this because of the London setting and because the heroine was not perfect, but she was strong and determined