The Girl on the Train

This book has become the one that everyone seems to be talking about right now, the thriller which has been hailed as the next Gone Girl and Before I Go To Sleep.

It's story is an interesting one as we are told that Rachel spends her days travelling back and forth on the train and in doing so she people watches from the windows, taking particular interest in the home of a couple she calls Jason and Jess. She watches their house from the train each day and has made up imaginary lives for them.

Rachel though is a complicated character, something the book cover doesn't outline. She's an alcoholic and is still obsessed with her ex-husband and his new wife Anna whom she phones continually and has on occasion harassed. She's unstable and her obsession with Jess and Jason may well come from the fact they live a few doors away from the home her ex and his wife reside in and the home that was her marital home, bought in happier times.

Written from the perspective of Rachel, Megan (Jess) and Anna this book develops at quite a pace and when Rachel wakes one Sunday morning hungover, hurt and with no memory of the night before it develops a dark undertone. She's grappling with something she saw from the train, her blank spot in her memory and the fact everyone sees her as nothing more than a drunk.

The book doesn't blow anyone away with its twists and turns, I found I had figured out the big plot reveal quite early on. It didn't totally surprise me. That being said it did offer plenty of options for whom the bad guy could be.

It was written exceedingly well and whilst none of the female characters was without her own unique issues they were all endearing. Rachel especially incited sympathy as her story progressed and we began to understand her issues and from where they came.

For a debut novel it is brilliant, it was gripping and deserves the talk its receiving. It holds its own against those other thrillers which dominated the book charts last year. It will be talked about a great deal more in the months ahead I'm sure.

Couldn't put this down.
Lived up to the hype (I buy hyped books months later so as not to be disappointed. This one didn't.)
I picked the plot twists halfway through, but that's the writer in me and didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book as a reader.
Highly recommend if you enjoy thrillers like I do.

I see a lot of reviews saying they hated the characters, especially the women. I actually even liked Anna by the end of it. The gaslighting, emotional abuse and control exhibited by all the male characters is typical domestic violence. They get the the victims to think they're crazy, or stupid, or vulnerable, say that it's them making things up, imagining stuff. This is not rare, provoked behaviour. I hope this book has sparked conversations about PTS, grief and addiction.
The story dragged, and I didn't enjoy it, but I felt compelled to finish, and some of the character growth was quite deep.

It's rare that I read a thriller, and it's rarer that I read a book in less than 24 hours. But I became immediately invested in the characters' chilling monologues, the intrigue of three different unreliable female narrators operating on overlapping timelines, and, of course, a good disappearance plot (who can resist?). But I especially love the setting of the train, the indifferent passage of time that does not stop for the tragedies and (for lack of a less appropriate cliche) trainwrecks these women endure. Putting the puzzle pieces together is thrilling, and Hawkins crafts it so carefully that everything comes together in a delightfully deliberate build, realizing together with the narrators what has happened, concurrently sharing their horrors. Would definitely recommend this to fans of Gillian Flynn looking for a quick but enjoyable read (pro tip - don't sleep alone after reading. Or, maybe you should.....)

The audiobook narrator did a great job with giving all of the female characters distinct voices and personalities. I really enjoyed her reading. The content, meh. Unlike Gone Girl, I didn't find it as obvious from the beginning because Hawkins did a good job of making all of her characters unlikeable and possible suspects.

y'all don't even know how many times I restarted this book. if you're gonna read this, make damn sure you aren't listening to it because this lady's voice??? why can i not understand your accent and why the HELL are you talking so quiet?

was a good book, i think Ijust spent 4 hours trying to listen to the first 20 minutes over and over again before i realized that i had to give this my full attention to understand anything.

but yeah, was good. movie was not as good lol

Oh my god!

What the hell just happened?!

The Girl on the Train —— :O :O :O

I went into this book with absolutely no clue what to expect. I hadn't really read much about it and haven't seen the movie so I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Although it did take a couple of chapters for me to understand the concept and structure of the book, it drew me in from the very first page.

I just wanted to keep reading to find out what happened. Who did it?!

The only fault I had with this, otherwise, very well written novel, was that the three narative characters - Rachel, Anna and Megan, all seemed like the same person to me. They had the same thoughts and personality etc. I don't know if that was intentional or not but I found that sometimes, I had to re-check who's point of view I was reading. Especially more towards the end.

All three woman have heartbreaking stories but I think that that the author used that to try and make them seem the victims. They aren't victims at all - well not to a certain degree. They are all very much flawed and unlikeable characters but thankfully the story was strong enough that the characterisations didn't matter too much.

All in all, this was a very easy read. It has twists and turns I wasn't expecting. It kept me wanting to read more and more and more.

Rachel Watson has lost control of her life. She is drinking heavily, has gone through a divorce, and now has lost her job. She has continued to play the part of working to keep her land lady from figuring out what is going on, but she just rides the train to and from the place she used to work. She watches people from the window of the train she is on, and imagines what their lives must have been like. She pretends not to see what her old home looks like now, but she cant let it go.

Then it happens, a quick glimpse of something that she was not supposed to see, then a missing person report. She goes to the police, and from there cannot seem to stop entangling herself into the investigation. She begins looking for ways to stay involved, even contacting the husband of the woman who is missing, pretending to be a friend. But things are not always what they appear to be...

This book was one that I was not sure I was going to like or not. It had a rather slow start, but then it draws you in and you have hard time putting it down. I was trying to find a way to stop reading it, but I ended up finishing it within several hours of reading. There were several twists and turns within the book and one huge crash that I did not see coming.

On the Goodreads Best Books of 2015, one book stood out amongst all others as being the overwhelming winner in their category – The Girl on the Train. Mystery isn't a genre I generally approach, but the storytelling and characters in this one drew me in from the start. The story is told from the first-person from three women in the story. All of these women have their own quirks and flaws that make them interesting and keep the storyline from being predictable.

I believe this is a 3.5. This book has been compared with Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl but I think the only thing they have in common as novels is the unreliable narrator. The character's lives are clique gender roles. None of the characters are likable. Everyone is dysfunctional in some extreme way. The story dragged in some areas and just made the reader want to skip to the end. Also, that could be because key information is withheld until the end of the novel and the suspense element was working it magic. The author uses great elements of suspense to tug the reader in and hook them. I would still recommend this book to other readers. I could see it making an excellent Hitchcock style film.