Spoiler-Free Summary

Rachel’s life has spiraled out of control since her divorce. She routinely drinks on the train while dreaming up stories about a seemingly perfect couple in a seemingly perfect house along the route, and then goes home, keeps drinking, and wakes the next morning to find that she’s called her ex-husband… again. But when Rachel wakes one morning with mysterious injuries and learns Seemingly Perfect Wife disappeared the night before, she feels she has no choice but to insert herself into the investigation.

What Worked (for me)

Although Rachel is the protagonist, there are three narrators — all women, all unreliable. Hawkins handles our unreliable narrators and flashbacks masterfully, so you feel obligated to question anything presented as fact.

I empathized with Rachel and her personal demons, even when some of her choices made me cringe with contact embarrassment. This is a broken woman trying to glue herself back together with booze and mystery.

While the mystery wasn’t especially difficult to unravel, there is a specific component of the finale that sets this apart from other thrillers I’ve read.

What Didn’t Work (for me)

I recognize that this is nitpicky, but it still bothers me five years later and ultimately cost this book 1.5 stars (it lost the other 0.5 on its own). Behind the spoiler tag is some science about drinking, but it is technically a major spoiler for the plot.
Blood alcohol levels affect your hippocampus, the part of your brain that records and stores memories. A “blackout” happens when your hippocampus stops recording, or stops storing those records correctly (like when you remember bits and pieces). The memories you have the morning after a bender are the only memories that exist. Any “recovered” memories after the fact - especially much later in time - are fabrications.

With the exception of that one thing in the finale, the actual story structure is so textbook that I wasn’t surprised when Jessica Brody used it as the “whydunit” archetype in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.

While I empathized with Rachel, I absolutely slammed the book on her once or twice when she insisted on doing embarrassing things.

Final Thoughts

This is the book that rekindled my love for reading in 2018. We had just moved to a new city and joined the library; this was on the best seller shelf and I thought, “Why not?”

It was a fun, easy read, and a solid introduction to thrillers for someone who was - at the time - unfamiliar with the genre. That said, it feels a little too formulaic now and I’m still annoyed about the drinking thing.

Recommendation

I would recommend this to someone who is new to the genre, or who genuinely enjoyed The Couple Next Door and/or In a Dark, Dark Wood.

I would also recommend this to writers looking to study unreliable narrators and plot structure.

Content Warnings