Girl on The Train by Paula Hawkins

Genre: Adult Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery

Pages: 325

Published January 13th 2015 by Riverhead Books

Synopsis:

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?

My Thoughts

“One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. I’ve got a few of those…”

Intense, suspenseful, odd and gripping.

Those are a few words I’d use to describe this novel which is told in three points of view. Rachel, Megan and Anna.

Rachel Watson is a drunkard who blacks out, her marriage had crumbled due to her inability to conceive a child which encouraged her to drink more and when her husband left her for another woman she drank even more. She loses her job on top of it and ends up rooming with one of her friends, she lies about holding a job still and it is while she is on the train ride she fantasizes about this couple that lives next door to where she used to.

She is unstable, imaginative in the eeriest of ways and obsessive, which aids in the oddness of the story as it unfolds.

We’re introduced to Anna, the mistress and now wife of Rachel’s ex-husband, Tom. They have a child together and from her point of view we see how unstable Rachel truly is, always haunting them, obsessing and calling Tom when she’s drunk.

Then we’re introduced to Megan Hipwell, a married woman who is in a seemingly loving relationship with her husband, but she is unsettled and haunted by her past. And suddenly she turns up dead.

The story sucked me in entirely and I blame that on the neurotic tendencies of the characters, they were an interesting study, to say the least, and the novel itself was faced past, it kept me wanting more.

This is not my typical read and I can’t say I enjoyed it because it haunted me in my dreams [haha,] but it was fascinating. I can see why it was fussed about.