Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train
I like books in the Rear Window/Girl in the Green Raincoat mystery/thriller subgenre, and this was a pretty solid example. The titular girl on the train is Rachel, who observes a couple every morning while on her train commute--a couple who lives just a few doors down from where she lived, before her husband kicked her out to be with another woman--when she one day sees the woman with a man who is not her husband, and then finds out the woman disappeared the next day. Rachel is an alcoholic, and definitely one of the overzealous types of amateur investigators (seriously, she does soooooo maaaaaany dumb things), which is not a great combination. The novel is also narrated in turns by the missing woman and by Rachel's ex's new wife. Things build pretty well, and the end was really strong and suitably creepy. B/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in January.
2 comments:
I feel like the end let the beginning down. It was a book about three really interesting, flawed women who do very stupid & interesting things and ended with a bunch of shitty violent men. It ended up feeling very Mary Higgins Clark to me, which isn't terrible, but it just wasn't what I hoped it would be. I officially hate calling anything "the new Gone Girl."
That is a totally valid point. I think the overhype did this book a disservice for sure.
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