Thoughts

I read The Girl on the Train about four years ago by the same author and it was alright but didn't blow me away. I probably wouldn't have reached for this, except I saw the audiobook was narrated by Rosamund Pike, which prompted me to give it a go.

The narration was excellent. Pike's voice is soothing to listen to generally, although in this she was able to switch into nicely distinguishable characters, some with surprisingly harsh accents.

This is the kind of book where there are a couple of separate narratives and you don't really know how they all fit together until the end. The start, with a crime being committed on a narrowboat, had me intrigued. It's such a picturesque but claustrophobic location for murder.

If I'm honest, I lost interest in the twists and turns for the middle third of the book, but when the threads all started joining back together, it was more interesting... if that's the right word.

There are a lot of dark themes in this book: incest, abuse, depression and suicide. I got to the final chapters feeling a bit grubby about the whole thing.

The ending felt a bit rushed and considering how long we had been weaving around the story, I'm not sure we got to a satisfying conclusion, so it's a 2 out of 5. The narration was great but I'd probably have preferred it on a different book.

Rating: 2 / 5