The Girl on the Train: The multi-million-copy global phenomenon

by Paula Hawkins

THE RUNAWAY GLOBAL BESTSELLER

'Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night. The alcoholic narrator is dead perfect' STEPHEN KING

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough.

Now everything's changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she's only watched from afar.

Now they'll see; she's much more than just the girl on the train...


***PAULA HAWKINS' ADDICTIVE NEW THRILLER, THE BLUE HOUR IS AVAILABLE NOW***

• ISBN10: 0552779776
• ISBN13: 9780552779777
• Publish Date: 5 May 2016 (first published 1 January 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Imprint: Black Swan
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[adamfortuna]

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.

[noqas]

This book was a recommendation of a friend and it didn't let me down. I read it in 2 or 3 days. The way the author got those two lives together is amazing, it'll get you stuck to the book.

[journalingirl]

I thought I should read it just because everyone read it and I was avoiding other things at the time. I kept on until the end because I like endings and wanted to know what happened, even though I hated it. The characters are so dislikeable I actually wanted something terrible to happen to them. (I'm looking at you Anna.) Yes, you can say that's what makes it interesting, that it's a character study or that it shows how we deal with misconceptions, but really it's just frustrating to listen to Rachel talk about drinking all the time or be convinced of opinions she has no proof of. I wish I hadn't been pulled in by the hype.

[Nessa Luna]

When I first heard about this book, I was intrigued. It was pitched as 'The next Gone Girl', which was a book that I didn't particularly enjoy, but still I was interested. Because I've always loved mysteries and thrillers and such, so I really wanted to try out this book. Then, I saw a free trial for Audible, the Amazon audiobook service, and decided to try it out. I got two books for free, and one of them was The Girl on the Train.

The Girl on the Train is about Rachel, who takes the same train to London every morning. The 8:04. The train almost always stops at the same red sign, in front of the same row of houses. And every morning, Rachel looks out into the garden of one of the houses, and sees 'Jess and Jason', a couple who she has imagined a whole story around. But one morning, she sees something that isn't right, and the next day Jess - or as she's really called, Megan Hipwell - has gone missing. Rachel goes to the police to tell what she's seen the day before, and gets swept up into the investigation of the disappearance of Megan.

To be honest, I was going to wait with buying and reading it until next year, mainly because I just had a lot of other books I wanted to read - and because it was a super hyped book. And I am quite wary of super hyped books because they can be amazing - but they can also be awful. But then I got it for free and decided to check it out while I was working.

There are six 'main' characters in this book, three of which - the ladies - get POV's in the story. We have Rachel - an alcoholic who keeps bothering her ex-husband and his new wife. Megan - the missing girl, who has a couple of secrets of her own. And Anna - the ex-husban's new wife. To be honest, I didn't particularly like any of them more than the other; in fact I just didn't really like any of them. They were all unreliable narrators, they were all keeping secrets from other people throughout this book.

I did really dislike Anna more than the rest though, because she was so full of herself. She kept comparing herself to Rachel - praising herself and bringing Rachel down more than she already was. And after a while I just got tired of that. I mean Anna is the woman Tom (the husband) had an affair with while he was still married to Rachel. She got pregnant and then Tom kicked out Rachel and literally two days after she'd left, Anna moved in already. Rachel isn't perfect, no, but Anna was just awful.

Personally, I didn't think the majority of the story was that thrilling, I was expecting more from it after seeing all those five-star reviews. The last couple of chapters, I'd say the last hour or so of my audiobook, was the part that was super thrilling and I couldn't stop listening even though I was already at home. The reveal at the end didn't shock me as much as it did with Dangerous Girls but I was quite surprised to be honest. I hadn't suspected this person that much and after a while I'd just suspected other people already and forgotten about them.

The narration in the audiobook was really well done, I found two out of three voices very pleasant to listen to. When I first heard the voice of Megan I thought that she sounded familiar already. It wasn't until I was halfway through the book that I found out it was Louise Brealy, also known as Molly Hooper from Sherlock. I decided then that I liked her voice the best. The other two voices, Clare Corbett and India Fisher were alright too, but I didn't really like the narrator for Anna. I don't know why, but her voice was a bit annoying in my opinion.

In the end, I did enjoy The Girl on the Train even though I didn't think it was as thrilling as everyone said. Even though I disliked most of the main characters. It was a good thriller, and I enjoyed listening to it while I was working. I do recommend this book for people who loved Gone Girl, Dangerous Girls and just thrillers in general.

My opinion on this book in one gif:

(Me at the end)

[Artemis]

I did not enjoy this book at all. I felt absolutely no sympathy towards the main character and the other characters fell flat for me. Do not recommend.

[redjoy53]

annoying characters. okay conclusion but painful trip getting there.

[Kelsey D]

I don't do book reviews. ever. but I felt today was an exception.
I loved it. It was one of those books I couldn't put down. I was so sure of myself in the middle, that I had it all figured out. And then BOOM. Well worth the read.

[elysium]

meh. I thought about quitting but struggled on... I didn't like any of the characters who were either pathetic or just assholes and it started so slow.

[Kate (Blogging with Dragons)]

For a book about a girl on a train, Paula Hawkin's novel certainly is a fast-paced rollercoaster ride of a whodunnit. I picked this book up late one evening and stayed up past 2am reading it. I simply couldn't put it down. Much like "Gone Girl" the main characters have very few redeeming qualities. However, I felt more invested in Rachel Watson--a divorcee alcoholic who has lost not only her marriage to the bottle, but also her job, her confidence, and her motivation for anything but her next drink--than I felt in "Gone Girl"'s similarly flawed Nick or Amy Dunne.
On her daily commute to London, Rachel sees the same couple, whom she affectionately dubs Jess and Jason, and pictures what their fairy tale life is like from her seat on the train. But her belief in their perfect life comes crashing down when she witnesses "Jess" kissing another man. Outraged by this reminder of her own ex-husband's affair, Rachel is determined to set things right by telling Jason about his wife's cheating. But things are turned upside down when "Jess," really Megan Hippwell, is reported missing. Filled with a new sense of purpose, Rachel insinuates herself into the investigation and Jason--Scott Hippwell's--life.
It should have been painful to watch a woman with so little dignity, and who is even deemed an unreliable witness by the police, stumble around drunk as she pitifully scrambles to find a sense of importance in any way she can. At times, I mentally groaned as Rachel made yet another huge blunder, calling her ex-husband yet again, showing up at his house, pretending she still had a job, making false claims about a friendship with Megan, lying to her flatmate about joining AA--was there anything this woman could do right? A more fitting title for the novel could even have been "Trainwreck Girl." However, through all of these mistakes and glimpses of who Rachel used to be, I couldn't help but to root for her to somehow pull it together.
However that seems less likely than ever, when Megan's body is found and Scott becomes suspect #1, and Rachel finds herself irretrievably involved in an increasingly dangerous situation. As she struggles to piece together the drunken events of the night Megan disappeared, she realizes that she may have witnessed more than what she had seen from her view on the train. Like Rachel, I could't imagine who was responsible for Megan's murder, even with the benefit of glimpses into the adulterous woman's point of view. "Girl on the Train" kept me guessing almost to the very end and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fast-paced mystery with complex and human characters.

[mitabird]

3.5 stars