Audiobook Review – The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Narrator: Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey, India Fisher
Published by Penguin Audio on January 13th 2015
Length: 10 hours and 59 minutes
Genres: Mystery
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
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A debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people’s lives.

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?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.

“They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be.”

Rachel Watson takes the train each day to London and each day she is reminded of her failed marriage. The train rides past her old house she shared with her ex-husband Tom, where him and his new wife Anna live with their new baby. A few doors door from her old house are a couple that Rachel has developed a mild fascination with, whom she names Jess and Jason. They’re the type of couple that her and Tom never were, seemingly perfect; at least they appear that way from the window of the train. Until the day that Rachel witnesses something that changes her whole perception of them and subsequently plunges her into a dreadful mystery.

“There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”

If you’re like me, you tend to stay far from the massively hyped stuff, or at least you put it on the back burner until it has died down a bit. The Girl on the Train came out early last year and in the aftermath has become the go-to comparison (in addition to Gone Girl) for any and all mystery novels being released these days. But honestly? This was superb. There’s nothing I love more than a book with an unreliable narrator and this story has three. Rachel is the bitter ex-wife with a nasty drinking problem who is prone to blacking out and having zero recollection of anything that occurred. Anna is the new wife and is blinded by her hatred of Rachel for her constant interference in her and Tom’s life. Megan is the unhappy housewife who is shrouded completely by her mysterious past. This story is far from your typical family drama mystery and is chock full of secret after secret that constantly kept me guessing.

“I am no longer just a girl on the train, going back and forth without point or purpose.”

The Girl on the Train is at first slightly complex and perplexing, however, once it gets its hooks in you the intriguing mystery possesses a palpable sense of dread that will keep you riveted until the shocking end.

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