This review is for the audiobook version of The Girl On The Train. I’ve had mixed feelings about this book. I had to stop listening to it because the narrators were getting on my nerves, but then picked it back up to try again. They still bothered me, but the story got better, and the end was somehow both exciting and predictable simultaneously. As others have noted, the narrators are all unreliable, as are the accounts we get from those they interact with. This novel […]
Depression, and blackouts, and murder(?), OH MY!
If you are looking for a well written, fast moving psychological thriller in the vein of Gillian Flynn’s brilliant Gone Girl you will be entertained and satisfied with The Girl on the Train. Like Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train uses an unreliable narrator structure to keep the reader off balance, revealing information bits at a time so that your understanding of the story keeps changing. It also features characters that are largely unlikable, yet strangely compelling, and keeps you turning the pages even […]
Riding A Train While Drunk Sounds Awful
I don’t think I’ve ever met a character who annoyed me more than our protagonist Rachel. That said, I see this as a win for the author, Paula Hawkins because even Rachel seemed tired of dealing with herself. Fired for months now, our alcoholic friend spends her days riding the train to and from “work” because she doesn’t want her roommate to know that she has been fired. This is pretty much a metaphor for her life–constantly moving but making no progress. The train pauses […]
Secrets, Voyeurism, Alcohol, and Jealousy
Whew! I took a long (long) lunch at work just so I could finish this book. I read it in an evening and a lunch hour, and you should too. Rachel is our main narrator. She rides the train to and from London every day, passing by the same houses every day, imagining the lives of the people who live there. One couple in particular, a Perfect Couple, “Jess” and “Jason” live just down the street from her old house (dum dum dummmm), and she’s […]