The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
Goodreads Rating: 3 stars
Even though I have given this book a rating of 3 stars, for me, it is more of a 2.5.
I have been wanting to read this book for a while, however, I felt myself having to push through it. I almost quit reading it. The writing style is not my type. I couldn’t get into Gone Girl for very similar reasons.
I figured out who the killer was, even though the author tries to throw you off. I figured out what ailed Morgan to end up getting her killed. It was, to me, predictable…which is a big reason I stopped reading mysteries.
This book was very slow and very hard to get into. I know a lot of people have given it rave reviews, and maybe my review will get tossed to the side and ignored. However, I read this with a few friends and we all felt the same way.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but this is a story about a drunk who rides a train to a job she no longer has so her roommate doesn’t start to worry about rent. The train stops outside houses where drunk used to live. Every day said drunk sees one couple at their home (sometimes just the woman). Every day train goes by, and drunk creates a life for the people she sees at that happy home. Then one day, drunk sees something else. At first, I the reader, thought maybe she witnessed the attack, but no, that is not it. The drunk also has many black out episodes, and she struggles hard with sobriety trying to figure out what exactly she saw during her last blackout. Did the drunk see something on the day that Morgan went missing and was killed? Will people believe her? Who do you think did it? The husband? An ex? The therapist? Some other random person in her life? Can you figure out who it was?
My least favorite character was Anna, the new wife of the ex-husband of the drunk. Rachel (the drunk) and Anna were at odds. The man in question, Tom, cheated on Rachel with Anna during the marriage and then Anna got pregnant, Tom divorced Rachel, and moved Anna in and got married rather quickly. Rachel tried stealing their baby once. She will call in her blackout states, email, etc. Struggling to hold on, struggling to let it go. Anna and Tom live on the same block as Megan, the girl who ultimately goes missing.
You will have to give it a try for yourself to see if it is enjoyable. If this is your kind of writing style, then there should be no problem. But if you need some excitement, through the whole story, and not just the last 50ish pages, then this book may miss it’s mark completely.
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