Book Bearings
The Girl on the Train
- 360 pages · about 6 hours
- First published 2015
- 34 editions
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1 About this book
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Each day it stops at a signal beside a row of houses, and she watches one couple on their terrace; she has given them names and imagined a perfect life for them, not unlike the one she lost when her marriage ended. Then one morning she sees something that shocks her. She tells the police what she knows and is drawn into what happens next, but she drinks heavily and has blackouts, and no one is sure how far to trust her, least of all herself. Paula Hawkins's psychological thriller was published in 2015.
- Murder victims
- Thrillers
- Psychological fiction
- Mystery
- Witnesses
- Alcoholics
- Railroad travel
- Strangers
2 What to expect
A psychological thriller centered on Rachel, a commuter who drinks too much, watches strangers from her train and becomes entangled in their lives. Her blackouts make her an unreliable witness even to herself, and the suspense comes from piecing together what she cannot remember. It is quick and tense, bleak about marriage and addiction, and most of its characters are hard to like.
Good for readers who want: a psychological thriller, an unreliable narrator, and a fast, dark read.
3 About Paula Hawkins
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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