The Girl on the Train by Paula HawkinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
On a recent episode of Books on the Nightstand Ann said that this book was "all about the plot and the character and the bad choices she was making and how much I wanted to smack her." I totally agree.
I love the concept of this novel: a woman is riding a commuter train into London each day and becomes connected to some people she sees from the train each day. I have commuted on trains where you have a front row seat in the lives of total strangers and this concept appealed to me. The structure of the novel uses three different narrators to tell the story from different perspectives (and times) and it was an effective way to keep the reader guessing but unable to put the book down.
Initially I wasn't really liking any of the women who tell the story, but after a while Rachel (the character Ann wanted to smack) began to grow on me. She is a hot mess to be sure, but ultimately I found her sympathetic.
I don't usually read thrillers, mostly because I usually find them ridiculous in the convolutions the author goes through to keep up the pace (he has a 3 word message for X that will save the world, and he will dash through the sewers of Paris battling alligators all the way to get the info to him, because a space ship has suddenly landed and jammed all cell phone signals...). But this one was very well structured and the characters created their own obstacles in a way that felt very human.
This is the first 2015 book I have read, so I am counting it toward the goal of "read a book published this year" in the ReadHarder challenge.
This book has been so hugely hyped but, oddly, I still want to read it. It's good to know that it fares much better than most thrillers!
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