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The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
Nov. 9th, 2016 11:48 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
Every day the same. Until today.
Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.
And then she sees something shocking, and in one moment everything changes.
Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.
Now they’ll see: she’s much more than just the girl on the train …
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.
And then she sees something shocking, and in one moment everything changes.
Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.
Now they’ll see: she’s much more than just the girl on the train …
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
