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A review by emilyrainsford
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
4.5
So I know I'm pretty late to get on board this train but I wasn't actually expecting this to be so - good??
I think I mentally chucked it in the bin of "super popular, probably not that good" alongside Gone Girl and The Silent Patient (first one wasn't bad, I just didn't enjoy it. second one was just bad).
But I was genuinely surprised by how good this was.
It's well written, for starters. High quality prose. Complex characters. Multiple unreliable narrators, who you feel yourself getting caught up in, even as you're questioning them.
No it wasn't particularly fast paced, but I enjoyed being in the story, I felt a strange fondness for hot mess Rachel, I liked being the observer of it all, watching it slowly unfold. It's almost like the reader becomes the "girl on the train" themselves, getting caught up in these people's lives without ever quite being sure they know the whole story.
Not often I say this, but this is a book that deserved its success. I'm really glad I accidentally forgot my phone at work the other day and had to pick this up off the office swap table for break time entertainment!
I think I mentally chucked it in the bin of "super popular, probably not that good" alongside Gone Girl and The Silent Patient (first one wasn't bad, I just didn't enjoy it. second one was just bad).
But I was genuinely surprised by how good this was.
It's well written, for starters. High quality prose. Complex characters. Multiple unreliable narrators, who you feel yourself getting caught up in, even as you're questioning them.
No it wasn't particularly fast paced, but I enjoyed being in the story, I felt a strange fondness for hot mess Rachel, I liked being the observer of it all, watching it slowly unfold. It's almost like the reader becomes the "girl on the train" themselves, getting caught up in these people's lives without ever quite being sure they know the whole story.
Not often I say this, but this is a book that deserved its success. I'm really glad I accidentally forgot my phone at work the other day and had to pick this up off the office swap table for break time entertainment!