Author: Paula Hawkins
Genre: Thriller; Mystery; Adult
Rating: 6.5/10
Rachel takes the train to London every day. Each day, as the train slows down at a particular signal, she looks out into the row of houses. She watches the people living their perfect lives, envying their happiness. Then one day, something out of the blue happens in one of the houses, shocking her to the core. Everything she had believed had changed, and now she suddenly has the opportunity to become part of their lives. Now she could show them that she was more than just the girl on the train.
This was, for lack of a better word, an average book. I did not enter the story with much expectations, and neither did I come out of it reeling from the cleverness of the plot. I felt that while the book started off as an engrossing read, it quickly started to fall short in certain aspects.
The writing style made the story flow easily, and it was easy to fly through the pages. The writing goes back and forth between two timelines which converge at the end, and also rotates between three different characters’ perspectives. The main character, Rachel, is a drunk, while the other two characters have their own desires and wants, which led them to have very narrow views and perceptions. Initially, the writing made it such that to the reader, the big picture was never revealed; rather, small details, clues and scenes were unveiled bit by bit in a very deliberate manner, leaving us curious and wanting to know more.
And it was because of this writing style that I was initially very intrigued. The set-up of the book was very interesting and provided a lot of potential for things to go south. The unreliable narrators built suspense, as they each revealed parts of the puzzle slowly. By going back-and-forth between two timelines, the author built anticipation and tension, and it kept the pages turning.
But after a while, it got a bit tedious to read. After establishing the setting, the plot developed very slowly. Rachel made terrible decisions, not once or twice, but literally throughout the entire book. I honestly felt that her personality was underdeveloped because of this: everytime I thought that the plot was going to move forward, or an important piece of information was about to be revealed, Rachel would either go back to drinking (making her situation worse and then squandering in self-pity) or she would conveniently have a blackout and forget.
The problem with this was that the blackout just felt like a very unrealistic aspect of the story, because she did not just blackout once or twice, but at all the very crucial moments of the story. If she hadn’t forgotten the sequence of events that occurred during the blackout on one important Saturday night, the entire mystery would have been solved in seconds, and wouldn’t have taken the entire book. The fact that she couldn’t remember the events until the very end of the book, and once she does, everything suddenly becomes clear; it renders the whole buildup to the finale useless, because all the interactions we witnessed in the rising action doesn’t really contribute to the “big reveal”. I felt that this made the conclusion less satisfying for me.
“The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps.”
On the topic of characters, I would say that each character’s fears, beliefs and motivations were clearly defined – and yet, they were all very messed up in their own ways. This was, yet again, a very good set-up for a thriller. But I did have one drawback – maybe it’s just me – but most of these characters had lust as one of their primary motivations. Perhaps the central theme of this story was lust, I’m not sure, but this just seemed to be an idea that was repetitively reinforced, and frankly got disturbing after a while.
Overall, I felt that the initial set-up of the story had me hooked, but everything afterwards didn’t live up to the mark I was expecting. This just felt unfortunate, because I was hoping that the plot would be one of a gripping thriller. The reality, however, was that many of the twists just didn’t feel that shocking to me, and I saw the “big reveal” coming a few chapters from the end. It didn’t throw me off because I was anticipating it.
This is just my opinion of the book though. I’ve read many good reviews of The Girl on the Train, and many bad reviews as well, which makes me think that this book is really a hit-or-miss depending on the reader. Personally, I wasn’t a fan, but who knows? You may like it if you give it a go.
Reviewed by: S.R. Scribbles (1st reading)
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