Audio Review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

4 of 5 stars

I have this strange love for books that feature people with ugly and terrible secrets, who have a tendency to sabotage their perfect little lives for no good reason at all besides the fact that they can’t help themselves. The Girl on the Train fits right in with some of my favorite novels featuring unlikable people doing shitty things to each other. Some of my favorites in this rubbernecking genre are The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky and, of course, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Such miserable people reside within those pages but the more harm they do each other the more I want to keep reading.

Perhaps but that’s beside the point and I know I’m not alone. Am I?

I’ll be brief because this one has been reviewed and synopsized to death and I’m still feeling lazy. Basically it’s the story of a drunkard named Rachel “The Girl on the Train” who spends her weekdays pretending she’s going to work and living vicariously through the lives of a couple whom the train passes each day. They are the perfect couple. At least they are inside of Rachel’s head. She’s even given them names and creates stories about them inside her head. Perfectly normal, right? One not so fine day, Rachel sees the pretty lady smooching some other guy and she’s devastated. When the pretty lady goes missing soon after, Rachel manages to get herself entwined in a big old mess and secrets upon secrets are spilled out for us twisted readers to savor piece together to solve the mystery.

I will freely admit that I am the world’s worst Sherlock and I did NOT figure out who the villain of the piece was until it was basically spelled out for me. This person was one of my top three but honestly all of the characters here were quite villainous and any of them could’ve done the deed. The draw of this book for me was not solving the mystery but sorting through all of the dirty laundry.

I basically despised all of the characters but I enjoyed the audiobook so very much. There are three narrators who are terrific at evoking the perfect mood for each of the women embroiled in this toxic stew. I was never left shaking my head in confusion when the point of view switched. If you are a particular sort of person who likes this sort of thing, the audio is a great way to go.




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