The Girl On the Train - Book Club

Yes, I finally read The Girl on the Train! With the movie coming out, my book club decided it would be the perfect time to not only read the book but also go see the movie as part of our October book club meeting.

If you don't know, here's a brief synopsis:

Rachel is a drunk divorcee who rides a train into London every day and looks out at the people living in the houses along the commute. Particularly the people who live in two houses: her ex-husband and his new wife and baby, and a married couple whom Rachel calls Jess and Jason. Their real names are Megan and Scott. When Megan goes missing, Rachel thinks she's seen something that could help the cops crack the case. But Rachel's memory comes into question, and soon Rachel doesn't know if she really knows anything about anything.

What did I think of the book? I feel like if I hadn't seen the movie trailers before reading the book, I might have been more surprised by the book. There were parts of the movie trailer that made me question one of the characters, and so when I was reading about this character in the book, I just knew that this character had something to do with it.

Still, even guessing what I was guessing, there was still enough mystery and suspense for me. It was the sort of book that I just couldn't put down. I kept turning the page because I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. You're in the thick of the story, and you know who the bad person is, and you're yelling in your head at the protagonist like "What are you doing? Why are you going there? Why don't you just do this? ARGHHH!!! Where is this going? What is going to happen next? How are you going to get out of this one?"

Don't you just love books that keep you on the edge of your seat like that?

What did my book club think of the book? Out of the three other people who attended the book club, only two finished the book. But it was agreed that we liked the book. I was hoping that maybe someone had read the book right when it came out to see what they thought of it without having the suggestions of the movie trailer, but nobody had.

What did my book club think of the movie? Despite the poor reviews for the movie, all four of us thought it was a good movie. Some of us weren't wild about the location change (London to New York) and some of us (me) were bothered by the bad dye job or bad wig that the actress playing Anna wore. (Not sure which it was, but it just didn't look natural.) We also thought that the characters of Megan and Tom were not as fully developed as they were in the book, but we realized that there was a lot of content that needed to be condensed in just under two hours. We think a lot of people are trying to compare this to Gone Girl but that's not really a fair comparison. It's not supposed to be like Gone Girl. It's just a good mystery thriller that, if you haven't read the book already, will keep you guessing. Be warned, there's a scene near the end that is kind of gruesome, so if you don't like blood, you might want to wait and rent this one so you can fast-forward.

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