Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - The Girl on the Train

This book took me on a journey! It was fascinating the whole way through. I love how effortless it felt to read and understand, how the events unfolded and were narrated by the three females' whose perspectives we view them from. I love how it shows how different things seem to others. I also find it amazing how they meshes together, and how the true events are revealed piece by piece.

I do wish, however, that we found out what happened to Scott and Kamal at the end, as the only thing that we are told is that the houses are left empty and we never hear of Kamal after his and Megan's last meeting, where she told him that she was going to tell Tom about the baby. I think it was okay to leave it out, but it would've provided a bit of closure and stopped the reader from wondering what happened to them, as well as Anna, Evie, and other characters, however, I think this is just a personal preference of mine.

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lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I have had this book on my radar for years, but I was hesitant to pick it up because I was not a fan of "Into the Water". However, I did find a copy of this book at a library book sale and decided I needed to give Paula Hawkins another chance, and boy am I happy that I did.
"The Girl on the Train" follows Rachel, a woman who is struggling to cope with her tumultuous life. Every day she rides on a commuter train, and she passes the same homes and people. One day, her life is once again upended when she witnesses something concerning. Rachel quickly finds herself roped into a dangerous world that will force her to come to terms with her own dark reality.
This was a perfect spooky season book. Rachel is a flawed character and a potentially unreliable narrator, but it makes her so relatable, and you cannot help but root for her. The setting of this story is also highly noteworthy. The story takes place in pretty much the same small neighborhood, but the descriptions are so vivid and as the reader, you are pulled into this incredibly atmospheric place. I really loved seeing the mystery come together, and I was left shocked by the end of all of the reveals.
I am immensely glad that I gave Paula Hawkins another chance, and I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.

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zakcebulski's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

This book was an absolute miss from me. I had it in my mind that it was going to be a mystery on a train akin to a revamped Murder on the Orient Express but... that is not what I got. What I got was some very tepid writing, and a story that I personally found compelling only to see if my guesses were right.

The story takes place from a series of characters, however, it starts with Rachel. Rachel is a self-destructive alcoholic who is working through infertility and a divorce. That is really Rachel's entire backstory. Rachel loses her job but she still takes a train daily to keep up the guise that she is employed. During these rides she sees people- Scott and Megan- who she creates an entire life for in her mind, who happen to live just a few houses down from where she once lived with her now ex-husband- Tom. Tom is a fucking prick who cheated on Rachel with Anna, who sucks too.
It comes to pass that Megan goes missing and nobody knows what happened to her.
Rachel, seemingly because she is an alcoholic, opts to continuously go to visit Tom and Anna, at one point breaking in to their fucking house and taking their child???? And... nothing happens? Tom just says "lmao I'll deal with it"? And then fucking doesn't?
The way that we follow Rachel through this story is because she inserts herself into the scenario with literally no basis for doing so.
It is revealed the there is a "complex" web of cheating which is slowly uncovered by the plots steady move forward. Tom cheated on Rachel with Anna, Megan cheated on Scott with Tom, Rachel sleeps with Scott because she can't not make bad decisions. Tom kills Megan because she was pregnant... and that's it? I mean it, that is the plot summed up in 2 lines... it is so overblown. It is so boring to get through.

One of my major gripes with the book is the character of Rachel. Now, I think that characters can be written to deal with inner demons in a very compelling way. But, holy fucking golly, Rachel is not that. She is not that by a long shot. She is an alcoholic, but, it seems like she is an alcoholic more as a means to move the plot forward. If the character did not need to be an unreliable narrator, it would not have been necessary for her to be an alcoholic. I felt that the struggle that people do deal with on a daily basis boiled down to booze ex machina- how can alcohol help move the plot forward? It struck me more as a plot convenience rather than fucking anything else and it honest to goodness got exhausting to read about, and this book is only just over 300 pages long. It is just so. fucking. overly. convinient. Need the character to do something? ALCOHOL. Need something explained but don't want to? G&T. Need the plot to move in a certain way but don't really know how to? A to the LCOHOL.
And then, in what is supposed to be a massive twist, I think? It is revealed that Rachel's blackout states were only partially real but were largely fabricated and she was gaslit to believe them by the apparent evil mastermind... TOM... DUN DUN DUNNNNNN.

And can we talk about Anna? I fucking hated this character. I guess we are supposed to root for, or empathize with her because she is a mother, but, she also knowingly cheated with a married man which helped break up their marriage. And she just acts so fucking victimized like dawg if your dumbass husband didn't opt to call the cops after Rachel took. your. fucking. child. then why the fuck didn't you? You don't need permission from him to call the fucking cops. It just seems like a very lazy way to write this character who talks about worrying about their child but then doesn't do anything aside from bitch about Rachel's being there. Yeah, it is unnerving, but, you can and should have acted when your piece of shit husband didn't. And, when Rachel pops up time and time again we hear Anna talk about how it is time to deal with this bitch and then she doesn't do fucking anything? She is such a non-starter who I only empathized with because she was the person who was supposed to be empathized with but when I sat back and thought about it, I got more and more annoyed because she didn't fucking do anything. Like... you know that you CAN do something on your own?

Why did Megan have that whole backstory where she inadvertently killed her daughter by sitting in a warm bath with her? What was the point of that? Genuinely? It had to be so that her death by murder had a seeming justification, but, it is also revealed that the person whom with she had the child with also died... so in reality this was a bad red-herring to throw dirt on Megan's character, and to make it so that we are not sure what happened- maybe someone else wanted revenge on her? But WHO? Apparently a random vigilante? Ugh.

And ohhhh my goodness, did you want a super believable villainous monologue from some random dude? Well, let me introduce you to Tom. This guy was written to be manipulative, gaslighting narcissist. But, fucking hell, he is so comedically villainous that at the end of the story he literally has a whole "here is what happened and why because I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo evillllll!" explanation. This just read like a "lol I don't think the readers are going to understand what happened here let me write it out with crayon! It was totally unnecessary, and helped completely raze any level of enjoyment of the book. He had the potential to be a super interesting evil character, but, he was even the character that had the most over sympathy passed to him, which effectively singled him out. He expressed very toxic relationship qualities, but, jesus, they are so overblown that it reads like "there is nooo way that the reader can misconstrue this!"

I didn't guess the end of this story. But, I kinda wish I did. It is just such a fucking boring ending where it is revealed that *gasp* Tom ended up killing Megan because he was shown to be an adulterous piece of shit! This book ended and I was so fucking happy that it did.
The more that I think about this book, the more annoyed that I get with it. This shit was not for me. I am very happy that I am done with it. I am glad that people enjoyed this one, but, fucking goddamnit, this shit was frustrating. I don't know whether I will read this author's other works. If I wanted a similar story done better, I would go read Gillian Flynn.

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laurenw's review against another edition

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2.25

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thebfry's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I read The Girl on the Train so quickly. All the characters are a little odd which I think makes this book so good - no one wants to read about the “perfect” person, when we are all imperfect.I started to suspect the culprit early on, but was still surprised in the end. I was rooting for Rachel the entire story - including continually yelling at her through the pages. I could feel her embarrassment and shame. The story was brilliant.

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