Book Review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train: A Novel by Paula Hawkins
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (January 13, 2015)

There are some books that one cannot put down until they are finished reading them.  The Girl on the Train is one of them.  For her debut novel, Paula Hawkins has written a page turner that very well could be the next Gone Girl.  As I spent the past week devouring page after page, I was imagining a movie playing in my head.  DreamWorks Pictures has already optioned the film rights.

If this book is not being heavily requested at libraries or bookstores, I'd be surprised since it is very impossible to put down.  I went into 2015 with The President's Shadow by Brad Meltzer as the book that I was most looking forward to.  There's still a chance that Meltzer's book wins the 2015 Solzy Award for Best Fiction Novel but Paula Hawkins' debut novel is going to give him a run for the money.  I say that with all seriousness, too.

With its dark themes of obsession, isolation, and loneliness, Hawkins gives us a book that will remind readers of the Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, most specifically Rear Window.  Our narrator, Rachel Watson, has secrets of her own as the plot zigs and zags through the 322 pages.  She rides the train every day and one day, she notices something is off.  From the moment she gets involved, readers are in for a heck of a ride.

With An unreliable narrator, an intricate plot, and a huge payoff of a surprise ending that NOBODY can see coming, the suspense grows by the minute.  Pages will turn fast.  Trust me.  I spent most of Shabbas reading rather than schmooze at the Shabbas table just to finish reading this book.

This may just be the thriller of the year.  You won't be able to put it down.