A psychological thriller by debut author Paula Hawkins.
The Girl on the Train feels familiar and fresh at the same time. It has been compared to Gone Girl and it is a little like that in that Rachel, the protag and main narrator has some issues that keep you from feeling like you would love to be her friend. Rachel has a serious drinking problem and is prone to frequent periods of black outs.
Her main blackout in this case coincides with the night a young woman goes missing in a suburban, London neighborhood. This happens to be the same neighborhood where Rachel used to live with her ex-husband, Tom.
Tom, and his new wife, Anna, still live in the same row house that used to be Rachel’s. The guest bedroom is now a nursery for their new baby. Rachel not only passes this neighborhood every day on her train ride into the city, she also shows up over there wallowing in drunken bouts of bitter remorse over their failed marriage — which was largely doomed because she wasn’t able to conceive a child.
When Rachel pays one of her visits she usually remembers some, but not all, of what she said or did. And the night Tom and Anna’s neighbor, Megan disappears is no exception.
The more Rachel gets caught up in the details of Megan’s life and disappearance, the more crucial it is for her to remember what happened that night.
I thought the threads of this story held together even better than Gone Girl. It was so well-crafted and suspenseful that when I arrived at the last 50 pages an on-coming train could not have made me stop reading. I did start to guess the whodunit part fairly early, but this didn’t spoil anything for me. It was still a great read. I give it 5 CHILLS… and highly recommend it.
Written by Paula Hawkins
Riverhead Books
336 pages
release date: Jan 15, 2015
