The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

When I first read the blurb about the book I thought it would be a much different story.  I imagined a person seeing something horrible from the train windows and dealing with it as a witness, but a detached one.  What I got was must more involved!

This book has more than one murder, several twists in the plot and a surprising ending.  Our discussion of it thought that it reminded some of Gone Girl with the twists. That is not far off!  However, I like the ending of this one better as the perpetrator does not go free.

This is the third or fourth book we have read where the main female character has a serious alcohol problem.  Can’t a woman overcome difficulty without being a black out drunk?  That aside, Rachel has many redeeming qualities.  She knows what she saw and is determined to get to the bottom of it even though it is not what she thinks she saw.  Her own attachment to the situation seems to make it more difficult to clearly determine what she saw, even more so that the gin and tonics that clouded her mind.  While she tries to do the correct thing, even going to the police, her drinking gets in the way of anyone believing her.

The central question in the book is how well do you know anyone, even those you are supposed to love and in many cases, marry?  Scott and Meghan were married. He thought he knew her. After all, she had told him a bit about her past. But, Meghan was a party girl who had flings. She also had a daughter that Scott did not know about. Since she was dead, there was no reason to bring it up I guess!

Rachel had been married to Tom who was now married to Anna.  This triangle is complicated and key to the book.  Tom and Rachel wanted children, at least Rachel did. Tom and Anna have a child.  Tom has issues to say the least and he and Meghan get along too well. 

Meghan is dead and Scott is suspect number one. Rachel tries to help but is not believed by the police or Scott but he does sleep with her anyway and suffers from great remorse the following day.  He feels he has betrayed Meghan without knowing that she had betrayed him.  If this is sounding like the 21^st Century version of Peyton Place, it is because that seems to be exactly what it is! 

Anna and Rachel were typical in the role of wife and ex-wife until the very end.  Anna felt threatened by Rachel and for a while I thought Anna was the one who committed the murders.  I thought is a real irony how they came together in the end, allowing each to start anew and deal with the fact that neither had really known Tom!