The Woman in Carriage 3

by Alison James

[Nadz@Totally Addicted to Reading]

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.Intrigued by the idea of a perfect murder (and we all know there is no such thing), I readily agreed to read and review The Woman in Carriage 3 by Alison James. I quickly settled in to read about ordinary people meeting on a train and whose lives would alter when a passenger died during their commute.  

The Woman in Carriage 3 introduces readers to twenty-nine-year-old Harriett aka Hattie, whose life is a train wreck. She’s always drunk, can’t hold down a job, lives with her parent and engages in casual sex with strangers. She travels on carriage 3 on the 18:35 train every evening. Hattie and the other passengers in carriage 3 are strangers. However, when a passenger suddenly dies, they bonded over the tragedy and soon began exchanging messages in a WhatsApp group. The growing friendship between this group of people from carriage 3 appears to be going well. Then one of them died while on the train. At first, it appeared to be death by natural causes, but then further investigation revealed murder. Who did it and why?

The story started out slow and gradually built up, keeping the reader wondering when Hattie would come to her senses. Although advertised as an addictive thriller, the story did not thrill me in the least. However, it made curious me to see if Hattie would finally get her life together and recognise she was being played. 

It wasn’t hard to see where the story was going in terms of the mystery. After all, the suspect list was quite short. Also, my radar went up immediately with the appearance of two of the characters. I theorized these two were up to no good. Throughout the story, they proved my theory. James introduce an odd red herring, which unfortunately did not work as intended, as it was blatantly obvious as to whom the perpetrators were.

Although not the thriller I hoped The Woman in Carriage 3 would be, and despite the predictability, I still enjoyed the story. After all, I read it in less than a day.


This review was originally posted on Totally Addicted to Reading