Item: The Girl on the Train
Rating: 5.00
Author: violetpeanut

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?

POV: Alternating first person between Rachel, Anna and Megan

It's been a few days now since I finished The Girl on the Train. I waited to write this review because I felt like I needed to mull things over, let things marinate in my head, before trying to write down my thoughts. My initial rating was four stars but this book has stayed with me. I keep thinking about it and remembering things and making connections. It's definitely a book that I would re-read and for that reason, I've since bumped up my rating to a full five stars.

Reading this book felt somewhat voyeuristic because these characters and their lives are completely raw and gritty and we see far beyond the masks they each wear day to day. That voyeuristic feel is apropos because Rachel, in turn, is also a voyeur who peeks into the backyards of her ex-husband and their neighbors while riding the train every day. All of the characters, and the narrators in particular are, by turns, sympathetic and also horribly disgusting human beings. Their personalities are each distinct yet they each have this pervading darkness.

The book blurb does a pretty good job of giving an idea of the plot without giving anything away so I won't rehash it here. This book will grab you right from the beginning. Rachel is like a train wreck and it's hard not to watch. As the book unfolds, though, you'll be sucked in even deeper and start to see connections everywhere. All three of the narrators are unreliable so with each chapter, the reader gets another piece of the puzzle and another suspicion.

This is not a traditional "whodunnit" kind of mystery, but suspicion does fall on just about every character at some point in the book. And none of them are ruled out until the very end. I had no idea where this train was going to take me until I ended up there. I think the comparisons to Gone Girl are deserved. Although the plots are not really similar, they both have flawed and unreliable narrators and a dark and gritty feel to them. They both are layered exceptionally well and you won't know what's going on until the author wants you to.

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins

Reviewed by violetpeanut on Jan 8, 2015

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