The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins

The #1 New York Times Bestseller, USA Today Book of the Year, now a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt.
 
The debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives, from the author of Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning.
 
“Nothing is more addicting than The Girl on the Train.”—Vanity Fair

The Girl on the Train has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since Gone Girl. . . . [It] is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership.”—The New York Times

 
“Marries movie noir with novelistic trickery. . . hang on tight. You'll be surprised by what horrors lurk around the bend.”—USA Today
 
“Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages.”—The Boston Globe

Gone Girl fans will devour this psychological thriller.”—People 


EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life--as she sees it--is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

UNTIL TODAY
And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Reviewed by thepunktheory on

2 of 5 stars

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Full Review on: my Blog ThePunkTheory

Well, how do I get started with this one.
For me, there are several problems with this book. First of all, there was not a single likeable character in this novel. Rachel was mostly annoying and all of the others are simply not interesting and shallow. Especially the other women featured are either crazy, boring or bitches. Usually you read a book and are fascinated by at least some of the characters and you want to know more about them. In this case, you don't. Believe me. 
This gets me to my next problem. As none of the characters are the slightest bit capturing, you'll have a hard time getting pulled in by the story. The chapters are told from three perspectives: Rachel, Anna (her ex-husband's new wife) and Megan (the woman who went missing). Paula Hawkins gets a plus point for that but there's really not much more that I enjoyed about this book. You could see the end of the story coming from miles off and after about 1/3 of the pages you simply want to shout at the characters for being so dumb and not figuring out anything. 
The Girl on the Train reminded my quite a lot of Gone Girl, another book I didn't like too much. They are both what I'd call crazy bitch genre. To me that's not fascinating, empowering or depicting strong women. In both novels, many of the female characters are simply crazy bitches and nothing more.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 29 December, 2017: Finished reading
  • 29 December, 2017: Reviewed