Review: The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis

The Girl on the Train follows Rachel as she goes on the train every morning to ‘work’ and how she sees the people as she goes, particularly, ‘Jason and Jess’, the couple she watches from afar. Only it doesn’t take long until she’s involved in their lives when she sees Jess with another man and is later found missing and slowly, her and ‘Jess’s’ lives slowly intertwine.

My opinions:

I think the first thing to mention is this is my first adult thriller (I think) so I have nothing really to compare it to, so I cannot say whether it’s ‘the best’ or ‘the worst’, but as you can see from my rating I did enjoy it.

I did have some mixed feelings on this book, even though I did enjoy it. I quite enjoyed the writing style and found it had emotion to it but I did find it got a little bit boring in plot in places. Not unbearably boring, but maybe a little bit dull and I would have liked a little more to it, though I suppose the author probably has their own reasons for the areas. I found there was also a lot of places where you were being built up to what felt like was going to be an answer but it would then turn out that Rachel couldn’t remember something and for me, I got a little irritated by it. But I don’t know, maybe this is a common thing in Thrillers.

There was a change of perspective which varied it up a bit and I quite enjoyed. I especially enjoyed Anna’s (Rachel ex’s wife) which were only a few and often short but I think that’s the reason I enjoyed them as they were almost extra snippets which were involved with the story even though it didn’t feel like it as I was reading.

I did find most of the character’s quite annoying at times and here is Anna is again being mentioned as I found her the most annoying and frustrating in ways but also thought she was a well written character, especially at the end. As for the other characters, I’m not too sure. I suppose Rachel was quite well written, but I’m not too sure for the rest, I found them just a little too annoying but not really anything else.

And as for the end, the ending probably made the book for me in some ways (I wish the last page or so were a little different but on a whole it was good). It was very dark, showing abuse in a the manipulative way it is.

So despite the slightly less intriguing bits and the annoying, whiny characters, the actually plot and idea of it was quite good. I can understand why some dislike it, but I also see how others love it.

Would I reread it again? Realistically, probably not, if I had infinite time, maybe yes.

Would I recommend this to someone? If I personally think a particular person might enjoy it, then yes. Though, I’m not sure I’ll be running around throwing it on everyone’s face.

Feel free to share your own opinions and thoughts in the comments!

Lucy 🙂 x