From Powells.com
Staff Pick
The Girl on the Train is an intense psychological thriller in which reality and perception seamlessly change positions and you can never be totally certain which is which. Rachel is an unemployed divorcee who drinks to get through her day. She still commutes into the city every day to maintain the appearance that she’s working. The train goes past the house she shared with her husband, who still lives there with his new wife and child, and she passes the time by making up stories about the neighbors there now, until one of them disappears and is found dead. This is a terrific read that is most difficult to put down. Recommended By Tom L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
UNTIL TODAY
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Review
"Psychologically astute debut...The surprise-packed narratives hurtle toward a stunning climax, horrifying as a train wreck and just as riveting." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Hawkins’s tale of love, regret, violence and forgetting is an engrossing psychological thriller with plenty of surprises....The novel gets harder and harder to put down as the story screeches toward its unexpected ending." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Paula Hawkins has come up with an ingenious slant on the currently fashionable amnesia thriller....Hawkins juggles perspectives and timescales with great skill, and considerable suspense builds up along with empathy for an unusual central character." The Guardian
Review
"[The Girl on the Train] pulls off a thriller’s toughest trick: carefully assembling everything we think we know, until it reveals the one thing we didn’t see coming." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages....an absorbing read." The Boston Globe
Review
"The Girl on the Train marries movie noir with novelistic trickery...hang on tight. You’ll be surprised by what horrors lurk around the bend." USA Today
Review
"The Girl on the Train has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since Gone Girl....The Girl on the Train is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership too." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
About the Author
Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before turning her hand to fiction. She lives in London. The Girl on the Train is her first thriller. It is being published all over the world and has been optioned by Dreamworks.