Woman Down by Colleen Hoover

Narrated by Sarah Naughton

Standalone psychological thriller with some romance.

I genuinely don’t understand the hate Colleen Hoover is getting over Woman Down, because as a woman, I could not put this book down. I tried to do my first immersive read, but I kept jumping ahead, and honestly, if the narrator had gone any faster, it would have taken away from the suspense. Woman Down is a psychological thriller, but unlike Verity, there is a definite romantic thread running through it.

Several years ago, Colleen wrote a short story for an anthology called Saint. Woman Down is an expanded version of that story that she started two years ago, which makes a lot of the speculation about this book being a response to a movie scandal or a thinly veiled autobiography feel like noise from people determined to hate it. While I’ve been a fan of Colleen for a long time, I haven’t loved everything she’s written. The books I do love, though, are absolute standouts. The advice to “write what you know” clearly applies here, and it feels central to both Colleen and Woman Down.

Colleen has written about authors before, and she states very clearly that this book is not about her, even if there are some surface parallels. The romantic suspense author in Woman Down hasn’t published in two years after a scandal involving a movie adaptation of her work. She has retreated completely because everything she says is dissected and criticized. With her next book overdue and her finances spiraling, she escapes to a secluded lake house with one goal: finish the novel and figure out what comes next.

“I’ve always known to be afraid of the obvious things like lions and bears, because those are things that present as dangerous. What I’m just now realizing is that I should have been more afraid of the things that have the capability of pretending they’re not dangerous.”

Petra is already struggling with writer’s block when she’s woken in the middle of the night by police lights outside her home and a detective at her door. The detective bears an uncanny resemblance to the character she’s trying to write, and he quickly becomes her muse. As Petra begins pulling from their conversations and interactions, her imagination sharpens, the pages finally start moving, and the attraction between them becomes harder to ignore.

But creative fuel can turn volatile. When the lines between inspiration, influence, and control begin to blur, Petra realizes she may have written herself into a situation she can’t edit her way out of.

I raced through this book. The twists kept coming, and I stayed tense and guessing until the end. That said, I struggle with books where I don’t love the female main character, and I didn’t love Petra–or any of the characters in Woman Down. The more questionable decisions Petra made, the harder she was for me to root for.

Likes:

Unputdownable once it found its footing. After a couple of chapters, I was fully hooked.
A constant sense of simmering danger beneath almost every interaction.
Several twists that genuinely surprised me.
I love books about books or authors.

Dislikes:

I didn’t really like Petra. She felt TSTL at times, and one decision was unforgivable for me.
The ending didn’t quite land the way I wanted it to.
I felt like the book didn’t know what genre it was.

The Narration:

Sarah Naughton did an excellent job. Her delivery captured Petra’s fear and desire in a way that heightened the tension throughout. I highly recommend the audiobook.

The Down & Dirty:

Woman Down kept me up all night reading and listening. I went in without even reading the blurb, and the twists caught me completely off guard. There were moments when my heart was in my throat. It wasn’t my favorite of Colleen’s books because I never loved either character, but I can’t deny that I devoured this book breathlessly, and I think the audiobook helped with that “on the edge” sensation. If someone is picking this up looking for more reasons to dislike the author, they’ll probably find them. But if you’re a reader who judges books on their own merit, this is the kind of story you’ll likely devour in one sitting, just like I did.