Hello Friends,

It’s not often that a book completely throws me within the first few pages, but when I read:

“One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl . . . Three for a girl. I’m stuck on three, I just can’t get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies—they’re laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone’s coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do.”

Which is an excerpt from an intro page, by the way, I. was. Hooked. I finished this book in about four hours. The only other book that I can remember, off the top of my head, that made me stop and reassess my life was “Gone Girl”, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read reviews that compared this week’s book “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins, to Gillian Flynn’s literary masterpiece.

Before I say anything else, I’m just going to say that I loved this book. It was amazing. Most books these days you can see the ending coming from a mile away, but not this time, not at all.

The book is written in several points of view, but the main two are Rachel’s and Megan’s. Rachel is a depressed, alcoholic divorcee that is also unemployed, but still goes into London everyday to keep up appearances with her roommate. During her daily train commute, there’s a stop in her old town where she looks out the window and sees this couple and becomes kind of obsessed with them. She’s made up names and lives for these people that she’s never met. She gets involved after the woman disappears and tries to put the pieces from that night together to find out who dunnit.

Megan is a depressed housewife that mysteriously goes missing. She’s also the girl that Rachel sees from the train and has made a romanticized life for. I feel like I can’t say anymore without giving it all away, so I’ll just stop.

I appreciated that in this story, everyone’s a suspect, no one is completely innocent. Every character has a motive and it keeps you guessing until the very end. In case you didn’t know, this book has been turned into a movie, starring Emily Blunt as Rachel. The link to watch the trailer is (here). I haven’t watched the movie yet because I’m one of those pretentious “I need to read the book before I see the movie” people. So I can’t tell you if it’s good, but I’ve heard nothing but good things.

I have once again made a playlist for you all to enjoy on this literary journey.

https://play.spotify.com/user/fancyneeno/playlist/6B3KCLdf3aHdfxGnJbIRgX