The Girl on the Train ‘keeps you guessing’

By: Anna Shapiro ~Staff Writer~

Paula Hawkin’s “The Girl on the Train” has been near the top of the New York Time’s Bestseller List for quite some time now, and doesn’t seem to be budging any time soon. Such notoriety is well deserved.

“The Girl on the Train” is a classic thriller, possibly the best since “Gone Girl,” which uses multiple narrators to explore the disappearance of one of the characters.

One of the most interesting aspects of “The Girl on the Train” is that one of the main narrators is a drunk. She doesn’t even remember exactly what happened most of the time, and therefore, her accounts are entirely unreliable.

This is a story of deception and obsession. When I first started it, I was unimpressed by the writing style, which I found to lack a certain poetic touch, a certain melodic beauty that I so crave in the books that I read, but by a few pages in it didn’t even matter. I was hooked on the story and had devoured the entire book by the next morning.

This thriller is so great because you don’t necessarily know what is going to happen next.

Far too often, I begin a film or a book and the entire plot seems to unfurl before me within the first ten minutes. Being able to guess every twist and turn that is going to occur is no fun.

This book isn’t so unpredictable that the ending seems unrealistic, but it is unpredictable enough that it keeps you guessing until near the end, when all the pieces of the puzzle seem to click together and you have this wonderful “AHA” moment, as though you yourself have solved the mystery.

Every person who saw me carrying “The Girl on the Train” around the bookstore stopped me to gush about what a great read it is and how much I would enjoy it. They were right, and now I’m spreading the message.

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