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Loading... The Girl on the Trainby Paula Hawkins
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» 43 more Books Read in 2017 (44) Books Read in 2021 (537) Female Protagonist (260) Books About Murder (15) Top Five Books of 2017 (609) Books Read in 2022 (778) Books Read in 2019 (881) Carole's List (143) First Novels (42) Penguin Random House (10) New Arrivals (1) Secrets Books (68) Books on my Kindle (58) Books read in 2015 (14) Missing Person Books (19) Books Tagged Abuse (55) Luetut kirjat (14) Murder Mysteries (54) No current Talk conversations about this book. Bit of a strange but very compelling book to read. I might be biased, since we watched that terrible Kristen Bell thing on Netflix, you know, the girl across the street from the girl in the window on the train with the blah blah blah. But anyway, yeah, since that was obviously partially if not totally influenced by this book, my lack of affection for that show definitely influenced this book since it kept making me recall it. Another issue that I had was that all the characters were terrible people, just horrible, and not one with a redeeming quality. I hated them all. I also felt it pretty predictable based on their terrible personality traits. I was waiting for a twist at the end to throw me off…but it never really happened. It was just what it was, and what it was, was bad… I had heard quite a few people talking about this novel, and while murder mysteries aren't usually my thing, when I saw it sitting in the employee recommendation section of my local bookstore I picked it up and I'm rather glad I did. This is not one of those mass market mysteries, let me tell you. Between our unreliable narrators and a cast of equally damaged characters, you will find yourself tearing through the chapters trying to figure out who the bad guy is and your sympathies will flip flop from character to character. The only people I didn't really feel any sympathy towards was Anna and Rachel's ex husband because they show no remorse or empathy for their actions throughout the novel. I blew through this one in less then 24 hours, so it wasn't a complicated or difficult read in terms of writing. Definitely a more commercial book, but still one that kept me on the edge of my seat. I didn't like any of the flawed characters, but I couldn't resist finding out what trouble Rachel would bring upon herself.
"...a building, inescapable tension that Hawkins handles superbly, nibbling away at Rachel’s memories until we, like our sardonic, bitterly honest narrator, aren’t really sure we want to know what happened at all." “The Girl on the Train” has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since “Gone Girl,” the book still entrenched on best-seller lists two and a half years after publication because nothing better has come along. “The Girl on the Train” has “Gone Girl”-type fun with unreliable spouses, too. Its author, Paula Hawkins, isn’t as clever or swift as Gillian Flynn, the author of “Gone Girl,” but she’s no slouch when it comes to trickery or malice. So “The Girl on the Train” is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership too Readers sometimes conflate the “likability” of characters with a compulsion to care about their fate, but with a protagonist so determined to behave illogically, self-destructively and frankly narcissistically (someone even refers to her as “Nancy Drew”), it’s tough to root for Rachel. She’s like the clueless heroine of a slasher film who opts to enter the decrepit, boarded-up house where all her friends have been murdered because she hears a mysterious sound through an upstairs window Has the adaptation
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. "Jess and Jason," she calls them. Their life -- as she sees it -- is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good? No library descriptions found.
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumPaula Hawkins's book The Girl on the Train was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Popular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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Rachel is an alcoholic. She used to be a wife and she used to want children. Now she obsesses over the lives of the people she sees on her daily commute by train.
Anna is a mother. She has everything that Rachel has always wanted.
Megan is young, beautiful and energetic, but the only thing that she truly wants is to run away.
This is a very good thriller! I enjoyed that we only get to follow the story from the bits and pieces that Rachel can remember from her blackouts. She is such an awful character omg! I mean it's like that on purpose, you know, she's an addict, but at times you'd really like to close the book and stop reading about her whining all the time! Poor Rachel!
Anyway, great book and the ending is really really great! It's worth it! (