The Girl on the Train
It's not often that I listen to an audiobook when I'm not driving, but this book snagged me so hard I've actually just finished it after a marathon 3 hour listening streak in my home (I had to finish it, I could tell I was near the end and didn't want to wait anymore). I listened to the last bit on 1.5X speed to finish it even faster.
It's a mystery told from the viewpoint of 3 women.
1. Rachel, the main character, is a drunk who rides a train into London every day and watches the occupants of a house on the street where she used to live before her husband divorced her and married his mistress. She frequently gets black out drunk and calls/texts/emails him. At times you feel sorry for her but at other times you get angry with her. If she was more truthful and wasn't still hung up on her ex it would have been a shorter book.
2. Megan is one of the occupants of the house Rachel watches. Rachel doesn't hide in the bushes or anything, she actually only sees Megan and her husband (Scott) if they happen to be outside during the short time her train passes their backyard. Or, since this is England, their "garden". The person narrating Megan on the audiobook is my favorite of the 3. I like her accent the most. Rachel has constructed a fantasy life for Megan and Scott, so that when she sees Megan kiss another man she reacts like a crazy person and actually decides to go to their house and tell the husband about the affair. She does this by getting blackout drunk first so that the next day she has no idea what happened. It's during this blackout that Megan goes missing. Rachel then spends the rest of the book putting herself in the middle of the investigation and creating a relationship with Scott (built on the lie that she was Megan's acquaintance). Rachel goes back and forth, jumping to many conclusions as to the culprit of the disappearance. "Scott couldn't have done it, he loved Megan, I know this because I've seen them drink tea on their terrace, like, a hundred time, and in my mind I know them so I'm totally right. It was the boyfriend. Okay the police say it wasn't the boyfriend and he wasn't even her boyfriend. Scott just scared me because he found out about my lies so IT MUST BE SCOTT!" It's a long book, she waffles a lot. She also struggles with her drinking and tries super hard to figure out what happened the night Megan went missing. Honestly, I totally thought it was possible that she had something to do with it a few times. I think this was the author's point. Rachel talks about other things she would do during blackouts, that her then-husband would tell her about the next morning. She apparently got mean and nasty, and violent a very few times. It's way toward the end that she realizes he wasn't truthful with her and on one occasion (when she tried to kill him with a golf club) it was actually HE who was the violent one. He would attack her when she was drunk and then tell her she started it the next day.
4. Anna is Rachel's ex husband's new wife. She was his mistress. She didn't get her own narration until well into the book. She's not a sympathetic character, because you've already been introduced to Rachel, and even with Rachel's faults you're mainly on her side, so you see Anna as the villain. Anna doesn't help it when in one passage she talks about how exciting it was being the other woman, and how she felt no guilt.
It's a while before we can piece together what happened, but I'm going to spoil the shit out of this:
In Megan's narration she talks about the man she's cheating on her husband with. Infuriatingly she gives little detail. Rachel keeps having conflicting memories of the night she went missing. Did I mention the next day when Rachel wakes up, hungover, she's got cuts on her face and head? That's why I thought she had something to do with the disappearance. She was angry that her fantasy couple was not like her fantasy and as someone who was cheated on she couldn't stand that Megan was doing that to her husband. So the night Megan disappeared, Megan and Scott had an argument and Megan went to the train station. Rachel was coming from the train station. I thought maybe they'd met up and Rachel had confronted her and in a drunken rage either killed her, or scared her enough to make her run away. Megan talked about being a runaway in the past.
Anyway, Rachel remembers someone, probably a man, hurting her, and seeing a woman (who first she thinks is Anna) walking away from her and getting into a car. It turns out that her ex was cheating on his new wife with Megan (shocker) and even though he'd broken it off with her, that night Megan had wanted to see him. So he's on edge because Megan is adamant to see him, and then when his wife is supposed to leave she sees a drunk Rachel on the street, so it's like all this shit is falling on him at once. He goes out to see Rachel, quickly roughs her up a bit, and then sees Megan walking along and picks her up in his car. She has recently discovered she's pregnant and just wants to let him know. She has decided that she's going to stop the lies and get everything out in the open. The ex (Tom) is a bastard about it, because it turns out he's been an asshole all along, it's just Rachel was too in love to see it, and they get into an argument where he insults Megan's ability to be a mom and tells her to get rid of it, and she says she's telling everyone everything and she's going to ruin his life. So he kills her and buries her in a shallow grave.
Rachel remembers seeing Megan and Tom together pretty much the same day that Anna discovers a hidden cell phone in her Tom's things (that turns out to be Megan's). Rachel goes to Anna and Tom's house and tries to get Anna to leave with her, because she's certain that Tom killed Megan. Tom comes home, confesses after he realizes they ain't buying his bullshit, and then tries to kill Rachel. Rachel ends up stabbing him with a corkscrew. Anna calls the police and they tell the police it was in self defense, and that they tried to save him and all that, but really Anna had choked him to make sure he was dead. You learn that he was basically a sociopath throughout the whole story. He deserved it.
The book ends with Rachel riding a train out to visit Megan's grave, and thinking about where else she'll end up. Apparently she's sober, and doing a bit of travelling until she get's her life together.
This is Paula Hawkin's only book. I'm disappointed in that. I really liked it, even though it dragged on a little at times. I opened up the audible store, totally intending to buy another of her books immediately. I'm going to have to remember her name, to look her up occasionally.
