From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

The Girl on the Train

Paula Hawkins

Finish date: September 13, 2015

Why we're reading this: An audiobook
Published in 2015 and lots of good reviews.
The author was born and raised in Zimbabwe, though…more
[close] An audiobook
Published in 2015 and lots of good reviews.
The author was born and raised in Zimbabwe, though she lives in London now.

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Jul 15, 2015 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

Even though I was pretty grumpy about reading Gone Girl for book club a few years ago, I ended up being glad I'd read it just because people bring it up as a conversation topic a lot. The Girl on the Train seems to be blowing up in a similar way, so I decided to read it too. (Sidebar conversation: What's up with all these popular books about adult women that have "Girl" in their title? It grates on me in the same way as the "The ____'s Daughter," "The ____'s Wife" trend.)

Rachel, the titular "gir Even though I was pretty grumpy about reading Gone Girl for book club a few years ago, I ended up being glad I'd read it just because people bring it up as a conversation topic a lot. The Girl on the Train seems to be blowing up in a similar way, so I decided to read it too. (Sidebar conversation: What's up with all these popular books about adult women that have "Girl" in their title? It grates on me in the same way as the "The ____'s Daughter," "The ____'s Wife" trend.)

Rachel, the titular "girl" on the train, is an interesting take on the unreliable narrator - she's an alcoholic who sometimes drinks to the point of blacking out, so her unreliability comes from holes in her memory and not any specific intent to omit details or deceive. She's had a rough past few years and is just likable and pitiable enough to be a sympathetic character to the reader, but she frequently makes hasty, poor decisions that make it hard to be too fully on her side - there's always the possibility that Rachel may have been responsible in some way she can't remember for the Bad Thing that is central to the plot of this book.

As with most thrillers, this is the sort of book where it's best to go into it knowing as little as possible about the plot, so all I'll say is that Rachel witnesses something through a window while riding the train, and has a memory of having blacked out in a time and place that put her very close to where the central Bad Thing happened. She spends most of the book playing amateur detective, trying to figure out both whodunit and what happened while she blacked out.

This is a gripping book - the writing isn't perfect and Rachel makes so many poor decisions that she can be infuriating, but I still stayed up late a few nights wanting to read just a little bit more. The author does a good job of keeping you guessing, and I didn't see the ending coming, though I do think the actual climactic scene felt really hasty and awkward. It's far from a perfect book but I can see why it's getting the same kind of buzz that Gone Girl did, and I think of the two The Girl on the Train is the stronger book. ...more

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Jun 04, 2015 Melle rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, copyright-2015, adult, read-in-2015, marriage, relationships, murder, infidelity, alcoholism

Holy balls. The comparisons to Gone Girl are not unmerited; this is a head trip, the shifting narrative is used to full effect, and the book will unnerve you about human relationships. I found TGotT's Rachel to be a more sympathetic protagonist than GG's Amy, and I found her personally more affecting and arresting as a character because I sympathized with her, but, as with GG, we have an abundance of unreliability, no matter how many likable moments the main characters get. Seriously messed-up b ...more

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Apr 16, 2015 Linda Parker rated it liked it

I listened to the book and the audio version had 3 different women read the parts of the 3 narrators which made the experience better. I liked the 3 narrator format and the setting on or near the train. I don't read a lot of thrillers because I either find the ending predictable or feel that some twists come out of left field with little prior foreshadowing. It was an entertaining experience even though the characters are pretty unlikable, so maybe 3.5 stars. ...more

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Jul 01, 2015 Heather Griffitts Clark rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: bookies

Just okay

It took me a bit to get into the story. It too too long to go from plain depressing to interesting. It had a nice plot twist, but had it not been for book club, I'd have given up on it a quarter of the way through. ...more

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Apr 30, 2015 jenn rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2015

Skillfully plotted, but I thought it was really meh. I ultimately just didn't believe in the characters. They seemed to have been engineered to make the story work, and not like people acting on their own impulses. ...more

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