Phil: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is an international bestseller. People on trains up and down the country are reading it. SJ Watson says it’s “Gripping, enthralling – a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read.”
SJ Watson is wrong. I started reading it and far from being a compulsive read, by the third chapter, all I wanted to do was shout at the pages, “Get a mooooove on!”
The story is supposed to be slowly revealed, mostly through the alcoholic haze of it’s main protagonist. I pretty quickly worked out I didn’t much care about her and looked up the plot on Wikipedia.
Job done.
There IS mystery attached to this book though. On the frontispiece there is a handwritten note:
To Katherine,
Lovely to meet you today,
I hope you enjoyed it!
Love Andrea
P.S. You really were great x
Who is Katherine?
Who is Andrea?
What did they enjoy?
What was she great at?
Why did she abandon a book with such a personal inscription to a charity shop?
Did she,like me, think the story needed to get a move on?
Did she think that if she’d been so great, Andrea might have given her a better book?
Had Andrea read the book, or was it chosen because it was the current best seller and therefore must be good?
We shall never know. Might make a good basis for a story though.
nolanparker 