I can’t believe that the last book I finished was Reconstructing Amelia back in January. Bringing the total number of books I’ve read in 2015 to a whopping four. I hope to spend a lot of time this summer reading and sharing some of my great book finds with you. Up today is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Here’s a synopsis from Amazon.

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Before I get into my full thoughts on the book, let’s just say that I was completely underwhelmed. Sure, there may be a few sections when I couldn’t put it down, but overall I just couldn’t get into it. NOTE: SPOILERS BELOW. 

1. What was your favorite part of the book?

My favorite part of the book was not so much the plot, but how the book was set up. Hawkins set up each chapter from the viewpoint of a different character – Rachel, Anna and Megan. (Rachel is the main character who believes she sees a murder while being blacked out drunk on the train. Anna is the new wife of Rachel’s ex-husband. Megan is the woman who goes missing and is later found dead.) After reading Rachel’s chapter for instance, you really want to root for her; however, once you read a chapter in Anna’s point of view, you figure out just how unstable Rachel really is. 

2. What did you dislike?

There were many reasons I disliked this book, but for the sake of time and space in this post I’ll just discuss three. First, I found it incredibly difficult to get invested in any of the characters, but maybe that was Hawkins’ goal? Each character had his/her own set of issues and it was hard to trust what any of them had to say.  Second, I wasn’t a huge fan of the overall plot, which was surprising to me since I generally love psychological mysteries. Third, I disliked the fact that there were random characters sprinkled in the story that had nothing to do with the plot and didn’t really move the story forward (i.e. red headed man?!). 

3. What were your thoughts as you read the last page of the book?

I have to say that I sort of expected Tom to be the killer. I knew that Scott (Megan’s husband) didn’t do it, and since there weren’t other characters that it could be (except for Anna), I drew the conclusion that it was Tom probably half way through the book. 

4. What were your thoughts on the writing?

I thought the writing was pretty good. As I mentioned above, I love how Hawkins gave the readers the story from each characters point of view. The one thing that I thought was lacking was a bit of character development in some. For instance, Hawkins gave us practically no back story on Tom, Rachel’s ex-husband and Megan’s killer. All we know from Anna and Rachel is that he “lied about everything, all the time.” But why?! For such an integral character, I feel like I knew nothing about him. 

5. Would you recommend this book?

This book was compared to Gone Girl in every review I read, and I couldn’t disagree more. I couldn’t put Gone Girl down because it was so suspenseful. The Girl on the Train took me over a month to read, because I kept putting it back down on my bedside table and forgetting it was there. I may be in the minority here, but it just didn’t hold up to all the hype I heard about it from friends, the media, and book reviews. 

Thanks so much for reading my post today!
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• What were your thoughts on the book?
• Who did you think killed Megan?
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