The Girl on the Train (Movie Tie-In)

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2015: Intersecting, overlapping, not-quite-what-they-seem lives. Jealousies and betrayals and wounded hearts. A haunting unease that clutches and won t let go. All this and more helps propel Paula Hawkins s addictive debut into a new stratum of the psychological thriller genre. At times, I couldn t help but think: Hitchcockian. From the opening line, the reader knows what they re in for: She s buried beneath a silver birch tree, down towards the old train tracks But Hawkins teases out the mystery with a veteran s finesse. The girl on the train is Rachel, who commutes into London and back each day, rolling past the backyard of a happy-looking couple she names Jess and Jason. Then one day Rachel sees Jess kissing another man. The day after that, Jess goes missing. The story is told from three character s not-to-be-trusted perspectives: Rachel, who mourns the loss of her former life with the help of canned gin and tonics; Megan (aka Jess); and Anna, Rachel s ex-husband s wife, who happens to be Jess/Megan s neighbor. Rachel s voyeuristic yearning for the seemingly idyllic life of Jess and Jason lures her closer and closer to the investigation into Jess/Megan s disappearance, and closer to a deeper understanding of who she really is. And who she isn t. This is a book to be devoured. -Neal Thompson