“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin

This is amazing that I am posting back to back book reviews on my blog. I finished reading the second book of the year. I am honestly impressed at the speed in which I am finishing the books. Last year, it was taking me weeks if not months to finish a single book, so many books I left unfinished with bookmarks still intact inside their pages. Some books I wish to go back and finish while for some books I guess I will never reach the last page. Interestingly many of the books were international bestsellers yet I never managed to turn pages till the end. Maybe, I was distracted by other mundane thoughts and never really got inside the book cover.

Thankfully, in 2019, so far so good and I finished two books in seven days.  Both the books have been diametrically opposite in every sense. While Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat was the innocent and rustic story of an orphan goat, the second book The Girl on a Train was intriguing and gray. There are no black and white characters in this book and every single character is gray with their own vices, yet they do not appear as villains but extremely humane.

This book tells us that what we see on the surface is not actually the truth and once we scratch a little we get to see the actual ugliness of relationships (note to self/others: do not take Facebook PDA by couples literally, you may never know how their relationship is in real life 🙂 )This book deals with everything from alcoholism, infidelity, lies, deceit, emotional gas lighting, domestic abuse, manipulation, and murder. Till the end the reader is on the edge to know the truth.

The story is told from the point of view of three women Rachel, Anna and Megan. Each of them has their own baggage of trouble while Rachel is trying to cope with her broken marriage and alcoholism, Anna is dealing with her husband’s ex-wife who is not ready to move on and Megan is dealing with a suspicious husband and tries to take help from a therapist. Megan is also dealing with the guilt of a horrible past.

The story begins with Rachel who watches a perfect couple every day on her way back and forth to her office in London from the train. She simply adores the couple and feels that they have a perfect life. She feels that the couple are so much in love with each other and happiest people she has ever seen. She doesn’t know them and therefore she names them Jason and Jess and creates her own happy version of their relationship. However, things take a dramatic change when Jess goes missing and Rachel feels the need to help Jason. She literally throws herself into the investigation and gradually finds herself getting dragged into the mess and also her own murky world gets exposed.

This story is no less than a murder mystery with a quirky twist. No wonder that such a captivating story was turned into a movie. I now desperately wish to watch the movie as well. This book fulfilled six prompts from #Writetribereadingchallenge

#2 A book written by a Female author

#3 A book written by someone of a different nationality/color/ethnic group

#10 A book set in a country that you visited/want to visit

#16 A book on crime solving

#19 A book written by an author who is new to you

#21 A Book made into a movie

 

The Popsugar Reading Challenge prompts this book adheres to are as follows:

# A book you meant to read in 2018

# A book told from multiple character POVs

# A Debut Novel

I hope to keep up with the pace of reading and complete a couple of more books by the end of this month. More than anything else I am happy to get back to the habit of reading that I was lacking the previous year. My next book is Norwegian Wood by Murakami. Stay tuned.