The Girl On The Train - Paula Hawkins

Klappentext: Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.

Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

My opinion: I bought this book in London in the big Waterstones bookstore near Piccadilly Circus. My sister had to jump out of the bus spontaneously because I discovered the store in the last minute :D Next time I need to be better prepared. Sadly this was the only stop at a bookstore this weekend. I did not even manage a visit at Skoobs, a bookstore my pen pal Michi recommended to me. Next time! :)

I was sooo happy to be in an english bookstore, oh my... They had a lot of beautiful editions, especially classics. But at the time I needed a fast read and so I chose The Girl On The Train because I heard a lot of good things about this book and I also would like to watch the film later.
I started this evening at the hotel room and finished it quickly a few days later.

The story is narrated in three perceptions. Rachel, who is an alcoholic since she failed to get pregnant and her boyfriend left her. Then Anna, the new wife of Rachel's ex-boyfriend Tom and Megan, who watched Annas and Toms child for a while.

Rachel is really in a bad state. She's broke and she misses Tom every day. She can't stop stalking him nearly everyday and she feel lonely.
Everyday she takes an early train to the city of London to pretend to her friend and landlord, that she still has a job. So, everyday she passes the same houses near the tracks and everyday she watches a women with her boyfriend in a garden near by. In her head, they are the perfect couple. They are exactly what she dreamed of for her own life once.
But one day she sees the woman with another man and Rachel gets angry. She herself once got cheated by Tom years ago.

The next day, this woman is missing. And Rachel wakes up in her little apartment, wounded and with no memories in her head....

"Hypnosis is not generally useful in retrieving hours lost to blackout because, as my previous reading suggested, we do not make memories during blackout. There is nothing to remember. It is, will always be, a black hole in my timeline."

I can tell you, after a few chapters you don't know what is real and what is imagination. Rachel can't trust herself and she is afraid that she has to do something with this case. She is desperate and tries to solve the case on her own. Of course she gets into bigger difficulties.

In the meantime I suspect everybody and I couldn't stop reading.
The end was thrilling because after all this suspicions I wanted to know so badly what really happened in this fateful night.
Above all, Rachel was a great character. Sometimes she really annoyed me with her self-pity and her stalking. But sometimes I just wanted to hug her because she really was pitiable.

The cover fits perfectly to the title. And nothing matches more to Rachel than "The girl on the train". She is invisible for many people but she can see everybody from her place in the train she takes every morning. A very good choice!

For me, this book was a perfect thriller and I am sure that a lot of people, who like that genre will love the book.

Would you read this book again? Yes :)