The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

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🚆 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 out of 5 stars)
Genre: Psychological Thriller / Domestic Noir
📢 Spoiler Alert: Just like Rachel’s memory, this review spills all the secrets.

👀 The Window Into Someone Else’s Life… and a Murder

The Girl on the Train is one of those thrillers where everyone’s a little bit messy, no one’s entirely trustworthy, and the most reliable narrator is... absolutely no one. The story unfolds through the eyes of three deeply flawed women — Rachel, Megan, and eventually, Anna — and it becomes pretty clear that none of them have great taste in men, or boundaries, or self-preservation instincts. But honestly? That’s kind of what makes it all so relatable.

Let’s get into it.

🚉 Meet Rachel: Sad, Drunk, and Dangerously Curious

Rachel is our primary narrator — a lonely, alcoholic woman whose life has completely unraveled. After struggling with infertility, she spiraled into addiction. Her husband Tom cheated on her with their real estate agent Anna, married Anna, and now lives in Rachel’s old house with their new baby.

Rachel, jobless and ashamed, doesn’t tell her roommate she’s been fired. She still rides the train every day like she’s commuting, sipping vodka from a water bottle and watching a seemingly perfect couple from the train window. She names them “Jess and Jason,” and fantasizes about their beautiful life together.

Until one day… she sees Jess (whose real name is Megan) kissing another man who is very much not her husband.

And the next day, Megan goes missing.

🔍 The Puzzle of Megan, Told in Pieces

We eventually hear directly from Megan, whose life is anything but idyllic. Her marriage to Scott is controlling and abusive. She’s had a series of affairs — including one with her therapist Kamal, which ended before it went too far. But the most significant secret? Megan’s been sleeping with… Tom. Yep, Rachel’s ex and Anna’s current husband. And she’s been meeting him at Rachel’s old house, no less.

When Megan gets pregnant and tells Tom, he insists on an abortion. She refuses. They argue. And Tom kills her.

We don’t learn this right away. Rachel’s memory of the night Megan vanished is fogged over by blackout drinking. She remembers flashes — being near the house, seeing someone in the car — but the details are out of reach. Still, she senses she knows something important and feels compelled to help. She tells the police what she saw, but they (rightfully, if frustratingly) dismiss her as unreliable.

Desperate to help, Rachel goes to Scott with what she knows. They drink. They sleep together. (Why? Still unclear. Loneliness, probably. Maybe trauma bonding. Either way, messy.)

🧠 The Memories Come Flooding Back

Eventually, Rachel's memory resurfaces — she saw Megan get into Tom’s car the night she disappeared. That’s enough to unlock everything. She realizes: Tom is the killer.

Around the same time, Anna starts suspecting Tom is cheating on her — maybe with Rachel. She goes through his gym bag and finds Megan’s burner phone. That’s it. That’s the smoking gun.

Now both women know the truth.

Rachel goes to warn Anna, but it’s too late — Tom knows he’s been found out. He traps Rachel in the house, and when she pretends to still love him to calm him down, he lets his guard down. She grabs a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer (it’s still where it was when she lived there) and plunges it into his neck.

Anna calls the police. Then — and this is the part that really sticks — she pushes the screwdriver in deeper, just to be sure.

🪞 Lessons From the Train Window

There are a lot of themes here — addiction, gaslighting, female friendship, the fragility of memory. But for me, these were the two biggest takeaways:

1. The grass isn’t greener.

Rachel believed "Jess and Jason" were the perfect couple, living a dream life. But the closer she got, the more she saw that everything was broken underneath. It’s a powerful reminder that we never really know what’s going on behind closed doors.

2. You can leave. You should leave.

All three women tolerate abuse — emotional, physical, sexual. They cheat, lie, cover for terrible men, and convince themselves it’s normal. It's painful to read, but unfortunately, painfully real. The Girl on the Train doesn’t offer a simple solution, but it does suggest that survival sometimes looks like self-defense with a screwdriver.

🧃 Final Thoughts

This book had me hooked. The plot twists weren’t shocking so much as satisfyingly inevitable. I appreciated the multi-POV structure — it gave depth to the messiness of each character. No one here is completely likable, but they’re all fully human. And while I rolled my eyes more than once at their choices, I also deeply understood them.

It’s easy to say “just leave” when you’re not the one in the relationship.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 out of 5 stars.

🛒 Buy The Girl on the Train

👉 Grab it on Amazon (affiliate link)

🚂 If You Liked This, Try:

  • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn — the blueprint for toxic domestic thrillers

  • Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris — another disturbing marriage hiding in plain sight

  • The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena — fast-paced and full of secrets

  • Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson — unreliable memory as a plot device, done right

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