The Girl on the Train

(The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.)

After the holidays, I installed the Kindle app on my phone. I used to think I’d never read books this way, but since I first tried it, I’ve plowed through several books at a pretty high rate recently. I just finished The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The book has been compared to Gone Girl, which I also read, but The Girl on the Train isn’t nearly as dark or sinister as the characters in Gillian Flynn’s famous book. Yes, there are several unreliable narrators and the story switches between them quickly, but I still liked them all better than Flynn’s Amazing Amy. She is simply terrifying.

The Girl on the Train is set in England during a recent summer, and Paula Hawkins, the author, is enjoying quite a bit of fame here in the United States at the moment. Film rights to the book have already been optioned, and I think it will make an excellent movie.

Without giving too much away, The Girl on the Train is told through the eyes of Rachel, a down-on-her-luck woman still reeling from a divorce and struggling with a severe drinking problem. Rachel commutes to London each day via train, and as she passes a set of houses near the tracks (one of which is her old home), she imagines the lives of the people who live within them. Over the course of the summer, one of the residents goes missing, and Rachel seems intent on finding out what happened to her, drawing herself into the case. What first seems like the desperate actions of a lonely and troubled woman soon becomes a huge mess involving several people in Rachel’s life, and the ending is truly surprising.

There are three women’s voices throughout the course of the novel, and while all are unreliable in different ways, they are still believable. I related to each of the female characters and never felt like they misled me, as I did with Amy in Gone Girl. There’s no tricking the reader in this book, just a lot of suspense that builds until the end of the novel.

I’m a sucker for setting and descriptions, and reading about a hot summer in England during my cold Texas winter was a really nice escape. Once I finished, I looked for other works by Paula Hawkins, but this is her first big success writing under her actual name. She’s currently working on another novel, and I’m excited to read that one.

If you’re in the market for a fun new book, I can definitely recommend The Girl on a Train. It’s a quick read, and unlike Gone Girl, I’m not afraid to have it in the house after dark.