So in exciting news, today is Books and Things’s first birthday. I started this blog exactly a year ago today. 41 book reviews later, here we are. This is weird. Anyway, onwards:
Released earlier this
year, The Girl on the Train is one of
those books everyone is talking
about. It’s sold over 1.5 million copies and the film rights have already been
bought. Apparently it’s the next Gone
Girl. The basic premise is as follows: Rachel, a divorcee turned alcoholic
in her early-thirties, takes the same commuter train into London every day.
From the train she can see the back gardens of her old street; sometimes she
sees her ex-husband and his new wife, but mostly she watches their neighbours
down the street, a seemingly perfect couple she nicknames Jess and Jason. Then,
when ‘Jess’ (whose real name is Megan) goes missing, Rachel finds herself
caught up in a mystery she doesn’t understand.
As it happens, I
really wasn’t expecting to like this novel. Sometimes when books get as
thoroughly hyped as The Girl on the Train
has been, I start assuming they’re probably over-rated, or I lower my
expectations just so I’m not disappointed if the book’s been built up too much.
Besides that, I’m often tentative about picking up crime fiction or thrillers; I
somehow got it into my head a few years ago that I don’t like thrillers, although
whenever I do read them I’m reminded that it isn’t actually the case. I think a
read a couple of bad thrillers a few years ago, which possibly prejudiced me a
bit; or I confuse my dislike of horror with a dislike of thrillers too.
But I actually really
liked The Girl on the Train.