The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I feel like I’m super behind right now on the reading trend. This book was on all of the bestselling charts in the summer and I remember seeing scores of people reading it on the subway during my commute. Of course, I had placed a copy on hold but so had many other people and it has taken me a while to get my hands on it. Now that I actually get a chance to read it, I feel like I’ve lost interest in the whole genre because it’s just not the “in” thing right now. Oh well, that’s what happens when you’re on a student budget and have to rely on the public library system to get books to read (NB: I LOVE the public library system so don’t take it as me hating on it!).

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning, which goes over the exact same route, giving her the exact same view out of her window. It stops at the same signal near the same blocks of houses, where Rachel can see the same couple living out their lives. She calls them Jess and Jason and they remind her of all of the happiness that she has lost. And then Rachel sees Jess on the news – Jess is missing. Rachel wants to help the police with their investigation and so, she meets “Jason” who is really Scott Hipwell on the pretext of being friends with “Jess” who is really Megan. But the more she tries to piece together the story behind Megan’s disappearance, the more she wonders if maybe she was involved in the whole thing…

I kind of liked the book but I also kind of didn’t. The story line was good, the twists were good, the raw emotions were good. But I didn’t like the main character. She was just so …. ugh. Rachel wasn’t very smart and she wasn’t very strong and she wasn’t independent. She was helpless, desperate, and selfish even when she was trying to be selfless. It was necessary for her to be that kind of character in order to make this book work as well as it did but that doesn’t mean I liked her. This may have been the author’s intention. Because of how Rachel was portrayed, I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I would have liked. I would definitely recommend it to people looking for a psychological thriller but I’m going to be honest here and say that this isn’t a book that I would read more than once.

Happy reading ~