THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
BY PAULA HAWKINS
PUBLISHED: 2015
AVERAGE RATING: 3.84
325 PAGES
★★★☆☆

After seeing The Girl on The Train on the bestseller-list at work for a while, I decided to give it a chance. A lot of people was comparing it to “Gone Girl”, which is a book I enjoyed, so I had high expectations for it.

The Girl on the Train is written by Paula Hawkins and was published January the 1st 2015. It holds the genres thriller, suspense, crime and mystery.

Rachel takes the same train every morning. The train passes a wonderful neighborhood where a beautiful couple lives together. Rachel daydream about them every day, imagining how perfect they are together, giving them nicknames and even starting to feel that she knows them.

Then one day, she sees something that changes everything, and suddenly she’s involved in a big murder case. What did really happen? What is true, and what is not?

There is one major thing that makes this book special; The characters. Especially Rachel; She is a complex character that has been through a lot, and we meet her at a point in her life where everything has gone wrong. To compensate for this, alcohol is the answer. Having an alcoholic as a main character in a crime novel makes everything more interesting. In this book, you’ll never be quite sure who to trust and what to believe in.

I enjoyed it a lot throughout the whole story. It didn’t take long for me to finish it, and I found it exciting and easy to dig into.

I get why people are comparing it to “Gone Girl”, but at the same time there’s a lot of difference between the two of them. Personally, I like “Gone Girl” best, but only because I find “the girl on the train” as a kind of soft version. The element of surprise and the characters is a little bit better in “Gone Girl”, but they’re absolutely not bad in this one either. This being said, I think “The Girl on The Train” has more “believable” characters that are easier to relate to, and all over it’s a much lighter read.