If you cannot stand a heart-numbing thriller that keeps you insatiably engrossed in an unnerving tale, while also keeping you impulsively flipping through the pages like a hyper-caffeinated clerk, this book isn’t for you! If you simply can’t stand being kept on suspense on a plot that you desperately need a closure for, while you are nudged around clueless in an intriguing story that only advances to be further complicated even as you are approaching the final pages, this book simply isn’t for you. If you don’t like adrenaline-gushing, nail-biting, compulsive read that almost seeks to break you down and excruciatingly dissect your heart as the nightmare plot unfolds, do not touch this book!
This suspense thriller tells the story of a flawed, erratic and alcoholic character called Rachel who keeps looking at the same house over the window of her seat as the train invariably stops at the same signal every single day. She sees a seemingly happy couple, she calls Jason and Jess, having the most romantic times of the lives – an everyday scene that lets her reminisce her own happy times with her ex-husband, Tom who incidentally lives only a few doors away with her new wife, Anna.
One fine day, her bubble of the “happy” lives of the couple she sees from train, whose real names are Scott and Megan, painfully busts as she sees Megan kissing another man on her own courtyard.
With trepidation and anguish in her mind, triggered by a sense of betrayal that she has herself gone through, Rachel is now determined to let Scott know that he is being fooled. Except that her intentions meet with obstacles of her own dreaded folly. She is dead drunk on the night she goes to the lane and wakes up next day injured and completely oblivious of what conspired the previous night. Her husband’s irate message reads that she had been behaving incensed around his house and disturbing his and his wife’s peace of mind. Meanwhile, Megan, the girl of the house goes missing on the same night and is feared dead. With no memory of what happened and with suspicion rising on Megan’s husband and her own self, Rachel has now a herculean task of decoding the mystery of the night. And she has no idea of the surprises she is to discover!
Narrative Style:
Told in the first person narratives of Rachel, Megan and Anna, readers are nudged into being highly descreet while reading the tale being told by highly unreliable women narrators, all of whom possess equal shares of their own foibles – Rachel is an unpredictable alcoholic, Megan is revealed to be unfaithful wife while Anna has robbed Rachel of her husband and her happiness, and she has done so with impunity and pride.
Language:
Hawkins, thanks to her experience as a journalist, has impressive command over the English diction while she is careful not to build further tension added to the unsettling plot by employing too much flamboyance in her prose. There might be a few uncommon words for a rookie reader but she has employed highly charged, short but meaningful sentences to tell a convincing, all-too-plausible tale.
Final Verdict: One of the best thrillers I have read. Highly recommended.
--- Gopi Chandra Kharel
This suspense thriller tells the story of a flawed, erratic and alcoholic character called Rachel who keeps looking at the same house over the window of her seat as the train invariably stops at the same signal every single day. She sees a seemingly happy couple, she calls Jason and Jess, having the most romantic times of the lives – an everyday scene that lets her reminisce her own happy times with her ex-husband, Tom who incidentally lives only a few doors away with her new wife, Anna.
One fine day, her bubble of the “happy” lives of the couple she sees from train, whose real names are Scott and Megan, painfully busts as she sees Megan kissing another man on her own courtyard.
With trepidation and anguish in her mind, triggered by a sense of betrayal that she has herself gone through, Rachel is now determined to let Scott know that he is being fooled. Except that her intentions meet with obstacles of her own dreaded folly. She is dead drunk on the night she goes to the lane and wakes up next day injured and completely oblivious of what conspired the previous night. Her husband’s irate message reads that she had been behaving incensed around his house and disturbing his and his wife’s peace of mind. Meanwhile, Megan, the girl of the house goes missing on the same night and is feared dead. With no memory of what happened and with suspicion rising on Megan’s husband and her own self, Rachel has now a herculean task of decoding the mystery of the night. And she has no idea of the surprises she is to discover!
Narrative Style:
Told in the first person narratives of Rachel, Megan and Anna, readers are nudged into being highly descreet while reading the tale being told by highly unreliable women narrators, all of whom possess equal shares of their own foibles – Rachel is an unpredictable alcoholic, Megan is revealed to be unfaithful wife while Anna has robbed Rachel of her husband and her happiness, and she has done so with impunity and pride.
Language:
Hawkins, thanks to her experience as a journalist, has impressive command over the English diction while she is careful not to build further tension added to the unsettling plot by employing too much flamboyance in her prose. There might be a few uncommon words for a rookie reader but she has employed highly charged, short but meaningful sentences to tell a convincing, all-too-plausible tale.
Final Verdict: One of the best thrillers I have read. Highly recommended.
--- Gopi Chandra Kharel
