The Girl on the Train

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The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Reviewed by Linda
πŸ“—πŸ“˜πŸ“™πŸ“’

What the actual flip!?! How Paula Hawkins could turn a habitual commute into a sinister thriller is beyond me. I finished this book in 3 hours whilst having flashbacks of Gone Girl throughout, and feeling as though each character needed to see a psychotherapist as much as the next person. Rachael’s lazy and aimless nature annoyed the hell out of me; whilst Tom’s deceivingly good charm made my skin crawl, and not forgetting Anna - good grief. I’ll tell you one thing for free; if I knew any of those people I’d call the authorities ASAP. Thank you Paula for making sure that I don’t fall into the (seemingly innocent) routine of staring into people’s back gardens on my train journey to work – after all anything could happen...Can't wait to see the movie next week!

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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