The Creative Pixie

The book I’m reviewing today is the newly published debut thriller The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins.

There’s a bit of hype surrounding this book, I’d heard several book bloggers commenting on how good it was and it has been at the top of the best seller lists since it was released in January. So I picked myself up a copy and thought I’d give it a go.

The story is written from the point of view of 3 women, the protagonist being Rachel, a 30 something alcoholic whose life hasn’t turned out how she’s have liked. Her daily commute into London offers a window into the lives of those who occupy in the houses on her train route. She regularly observes ‘Jess and Jason’ in their home whenever the train pauses at a broken red light and imagines what their perfect lives are like. One day Rachel sees something from the train then a couple of days her perfect couple make the headlines. Rachel needs to know more about what happened and ends up getting involved in the police investigation – possibly the worst decision she could make in her alcohol addled existence.

The characters are well written though due to the diary format every so often I did have to check whereabouts on each characters timeline I was and how the story connected them. The story starts off gently enough then as the drama progresses you really feel how Rachel struggles and kind of becomes a bit disgusting. There are several points where the plot overlaps with each woman and each time the story becomes that little bit clearer though you are left guessing right up until the end who is lying and who (if anyone) is telling the truth.

It is a really enjoyable and thrilling story, I had to keep reading it to see what would happen next and to see if I was right. I ended up finishing it in 2 days! Yes a marathon reading session saw me finish it on Friday night then wake up with an eye infection on Saturday morning – boo 😦

My score for this book is 9/10