The Girl on the Train

A boring & predictable waste of my time.

I have never given a book such a bad review before but I honestly do not understand how this book is so popular. The story was painfully slow, the characters were pathetic and I was so glad when it was over. I'm surprised I made it to the end but I think I was holding out hope it was going to get better at some point. Really disappointed.

15 of 17 people found this review helpful

I had doubts, I never should have. Brilliant

Where does The Girl on the Train rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Top 3

Who was your favorite character and why?

Rachel. The primary character, and her complex personality drove me crazy at times but my support for her throughout never wavered. Accurately narrated. The life of an alcoholic can often be misrepresented, but has I learned through my profession in health care, this depiction never strayed from the reality. Don't let this guide you alone, the story of three women and three men holds you all the way through to its climatic conclusion.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favourite?

Megan. Again, superbly narrated as the story introduced us to her topsy turvy world.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. I never do, you need a break to build up the anticipation for the next instalment.

Any additional comments?

Only one criticism. The three narrators had separate characters, which of course enabled you to build up pictures of the characters. However, one character (Kamal), was narrated by two. Both narrators used different voices for him, and for several chapters I thought they were different characters, one the real Kamal, the other someone pretending to be him. Obviously now I realised I was wrong, two of the women characters encountered him, and each narrated for Kamal's character too, hence the confusion. In other words, don't draw anything in to it, like this dim wit here :)

121 of 144 people found this review helpful

Surprisingly dull!

Would you try another book written by Paula Hawkins or narrated by the narrators?

The narrators were great, so of course. Regarding the author, the quality of the writing was good, so yes, if the synopsis appealed to me.

What was most disappointing about Paula Hawkins’s story?

I listened to well over half of it, then gave-up as it wasn't getting any better. I found none of the characters appealing. The story dragged on and remained dull throughout. No doubt there will be an interesting twist at some point, but I just can't care enough to continue.

Any additional comments?

I looked forward to listening to this as the premise promised a really interesting story. This novel has been compared to Gone Girl - one if my favourite books. It doesn't come close in my opinion.

65 of 78 people found this review helpful

Disappointing

Started off really interesting. Couldn't stop listening. Got bored midway through and was sick of the constant referrals to the train.
Thought the ending was poor. Really disappointed:-(

13 of 15 people found this review helpful

Slow, disappointing and obvious

After reading the reviews I was excited to listen to this book. I'm puzzled by the majority of other people's reviews which describe this as 'fast paced' or 'captivating'. I found the story line one which was obvious, terribly slow and very disappointing. The characters were typical and the layout of the story matched. The only thing I liked was Anna's voice, I found it comical.

85 of 103 people found this review helpful

What a waste of time.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A decent plot and some proper direction.

What could Paula Hawkins have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had there been at least one character who was not consistently and gob-smackingly stupid, worthless and self-obsessed. Even the tragic one for whom I think we were supposed to have felt sympathy was so suicidally brainless I wondered how she managed to make it to the age she did.

What aspect of the narrators’s performance might you have changed?

There were three narrators and the direction was a complete disaster.
Two of the narrators had such similar voices it was occasionally difficult to differentiate them — to be fair, not that the writer’s characterisation helped — but unforgivably when two different women see the same psychiatrist, one of them speaks his words with some sort of an unidentifiable foreign accent, and the other one gives him the voice of an Oxford graduate. I cannot blame the actresses for that, they got their scripts and read them as they saw fit. Was the director asleep?

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Girl on the Train?

The scenes between Chapter One and The End

Any additional comments?

The themes were adult but I was put in mind of all those schoolgirl stories in which young Felicity notices something nefarious going on in her boarding school and after an extravagant catalogue of tribulations during which no-one believes her and her fellow pupils send her to Coventry, she discovers that Mam’sel Odieux (the French teacher who bullies her mercilessly), turns out to be a German spy after all. Having exposed the dastardly plot in front of the whole school Felicity—suddenly the school heroine—is carried on the shoulders of all her newly-admiring school friends to be treated to a cream cake tea with the Headmistress. Happy ending and not a backward thought to all the bullying that went before.

95 of 116 people found this review helpful

Wildly over-rated, poorly narrated

We;;, my female partner sight-read it and I listened. She said it was okay but lacked any surprises. I found the characters hard to empathise with, not a problem in itself, but also hard to believe. Maybe this was partly because the reading irritated me rather than drew me into a fairly run of the mill story line. The actor reading Anna does a particularly poor job in my view, but throughout there are just too many complete failures of getting tone and emphasis right- maybe they didn't understand what they were reading? In summary, not the worst best-seller I’ve listened to recently, but close to it. And if you haven’t guessed, I thought Gone Girl wildly over-rated too.

33 of 40 people found this review helpful

Hated it

Sorry but this was awful. So boring, banal inane musings of three very unlikeable women, too long, far too much detail of unimportant rubbish. I couldn't have cared less who killed ? I would happily have killed all of them.,,

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Don't Believe the Hype

I was really looking forward to this book, but I genuinely cannot understand how it has received so many good reviews (and there are a lot). I found it to be repetitive, predictable and painfully slow. The outcome was obvious from about half way through, the plot was weak, and the characters wholly unlikable.

I found it ironic that a book which highlighted the dangers of alcoholism had me wanting a gin and tonic just to get through it.

97 of 125 people found this review helpful

Runs Like An Express

What did you like most about The Girl on the Train?

The female characters are utterly engaging; you care about so very much. The male characters with one exception are brutes but three dimensional brutes, ordinary men on the surface, but in a domestic situation, tyrants.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Rachel, lost, foolish yet lovable and human. You would be pleased to have her as a friend.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

The three female protagonists are voiced by three different women, all very different in tone reflecting the various aspects of their individual characters.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This is an emotional roller coaster; full of suspense, full of pain. It made me wince rather than cry.

Any additional comments?

By far and away the best thriller I have listened to for years.

51 of 67 people found this review helpful