14 June, 2015

#BookReview :: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. 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.

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 offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Goodreads I Amazon


I got this book from Audible and listened to the audiobook over a period of a week. It was an incredible experience for someone who is a newbie to Audiobooks.

Rachel is a divorcee, who travels by the same train every day. As she passes by her old home, she soon becomes enamored by a couple living down a couple of houses. To her, they seem like the perfect couple who are in love with each other. But one day she sees the girl with another man and soon after the girl goes missing. When Rachel gets the news, she feels like she needs to help find the girl. She tells the police what she knows, but they do not take her seriously. That’s when Rachel decides to take some action on her own and the story starts to unfold.

This is such an awesome and horrifying novel. Each and every character in it, much like real life, is flawed. There were moments when I felt like shaking a character till she saw sense and then there were moments where I was too horrified. Rachel, the narrator, is so unreliable because of her drinking habits that half the time I was left wondering if she had been hallucinating about some of the things. She came off all wrong at the beginning and I couldn’t figure out why the author would put her in the forefront of the novel. It took me sometime and it was way past the first half of the story that I managed to warm up to her.

It took me some time to really get the hang of the story (not necessarily because of the writing but mostly because I am yet to get used to listening to audiobooks) but once I got into it, I could hardly stop listening. (Unfortunately real life does seem to get in the way as does the lure of print books.) The language used is opulent and the narration style that gives us the story from three POVs is really interesting. The plot was really engrossing. The mystery had me going back on forth on who the murderer could be. Some of the red herrings really had me going in circles and the climax was worth all the buildup.

The narrators - Louise Brealey, Clare Corbett and India Fisher – have done a great job in bringing the characters alive. I am still not sure about who narrated which character, but they were a perfect fit. It was almost like I could feel the characters and their emotions through their narration.

Awesome!




2 comments:

  1. This sounds good. Will check it out. Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a very good but dark book. Try the movie also sahay

    ReplyDelete