The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins Review

Rachel is a hopeless alcoholic divorcee. Despite losing her job, she still takes the train into London every day, passing the house Tom, her ex, lives in with his new wife, Anna, and their kid - a child she couldn’t give him herself. Then Rachel sees their married neighbour, Megan Hipwell, from the train window kissing a man who turns out to be her therapist. When Megan goes missing, the secrets of her life reveal a startling link to Rachel’s own… 

I couldn’t finish this so-called “thriller”. It’s not a long book either at just over 300 pages but, some two weeks of picking it up, reading a few miserable pages, and quickly putting it down again, I’m ready to admit defeat at the 180 page mark. 

Paula Hawkins’ novel is full of seedy, unlikeable people in a “plot” that reads like an overlong episode of Eastenders. Rachel’s ex Tom and his missus Anna argue with Rachel in the street while Megan’s cheating on her husband Scott who argue at home and Cathy, Rachel’s housemate, wants her to get help, and blah blah blaaaaah who finds this interesting!? 

No real story appears until well over the halfway mark and even then it’s really only the hint of one. Most of the time it’s this soap-opera dogshit as the dimwits bicker like the dreary suburbanites like they are about dull nonsense. Paula Hawkins’ writing is pedestrian at best, rendering it all in flat, un-evocative prose. 

Quite why The Girl on the Train is such a runaway hit, I have no idea. It’s tedious claptrap of the lowest order. Then again Eastenders is incredibly popular too so there’s probably a crossover between those audiences. Don’t listen to anyone who compares this crap to Gone Girl, they are nothing alike and at least Gillian Flynn can write. Exhausting and boring, The Girl on the Train is a total waste of time.

The Girl on the Train