Boring from start to finish. Every character in this novel, male or female, was worthy of a punch. The females were a horrid bunch.
Admittedly, the guys were off-their-head but if I had to deal with any of those whiny, pathetic, vain, possessive women would be the death of me.
The Girl on the Train has been compared with Gone Girl, but although they are both bestsellers, there’s not much glaring similarities between the events of both novels. If anything, this novel is a hybrid of other marriage thrillers like Before I Go To Sleep with the memory loss/drunken black outs and Before We Met with the unemployed main character. Oh and possibly Gone Girl with the interrogation scene. The only real difference was that Rachel, the main character, is a self-loathing drunk.
It was interesting to read from the pov of a character who wasn’t directly involved in the murder of the victim, however it got frustrating in that Rachel’s pov is very repetitive as mostly she just drinks and sees the same house which she spies in every day during her commute to London.
The structure of the novel is told in 3 povs. Rachel (the ex-wife), Megan (the mistress) and Anna (the new wife). As many others have remarked in their reviews, the voices founded the same. e.g. similar anxieties, thoughts, word choices, states of mind etc. There was nothing remarkable about any of these female characters except two were cheats. To be honest, I’m getting mighty sick of infidelity being used as a plot device/twist in EVERY marriage thriller. It’s just kind of pointless as all it does is make the characters seem sleazy and unsympathetic.
The pace was slow-ish, but not unbearably so. It was just an average thriller imo that lacked oomph.
I think the purpose of the story wasn’t to offer any social commentary on gender roles/modern marriage like Gone Girl tried to do, to varying degrees of effectiveness, but to provide a simple mystery thriller. Except, it wasn’t stunning, it was just predictable and tedious having to read about nasty characters without much depth to them.
Although, Hawkins is skilled in writing domestic violence scenes, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I wouldn’t recommend this. Overrated af.
(RATING: **/***** )
The Angry Bookworm 
Aug 30, 2016 at 12:38 pm
I’ve read TGOTT and found the book like a slow train journey that never ends 😦
Rachel and the motley crew deserved each other.
LikeLike
Aug 31, 2016 at 2:32 am
Lol, you know you’ll watch the movie 😛
LikeLike
Aug 30, 2016 at 6:27 pm
Tho’ my own take was far more favourable, it’s easy to understand that this story doesn’t work for everyone. The things that I so liked were: (1) that I easiy identified with an avoidant personality like Rachel’s, (2) the three readers on the audible version – their various dialects (Home Counties, Norfolk, & Esturary), differentiated them nicely, (3) Megan’s backstory was an affecting contrast to Rachel’s fantasies. Like Rachel, I’m a people watcher & lke to make up stories about them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aug 31, 2016 at 2:31 am
Yeah, I can see why it may have been better on audible. An engaging narrator can make all the difference. People watching is a lot of fun, I agree. Sometimes you hear some weird snippets of convo as you walk past people – it’s amusing! Thank you for leaving a comment. 🙂
LikeLike
Oct 12, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Reblogged this on Call me Ms. Bibliophile and commented:
I haven’t bought this book because I thought it looked well, boring. And reading this honest review, I can safely say I dodged a bullet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oct 12, 2016 at 9:33 pm
Aw thanks a lot for the comment and the reblog. Much appreciated. Yeah, the book was pretty bland and predictable and usually I’m bad with guessing mysteries and crime fiction. With all the publicity and general hoopla I thought it would be better – even the movie is said to be crap if I’m to go by the critics reviews.
LikeLiked by 1 person