Lauren Reviews The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Title: The Girl on the Train
Author: Paula Hawkins
Published: January 2015 by Riverhead Books
Acquired: Purchased from Amazon
Rating: 5 Stars

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this book. I felt every single character's feelings... I felt angry, depressed, hopeless, hopeful, satisfied, imaginative. Rachel isn't a character I can relate to, but she allowed me to see alcoholism from a different perspective. I was around an alcoholic for most of my childhood and in my early teenage years. I was never an enabler and I have pretty strong views on drunks in general. That being said, Rachel is an alcoholic. She has blackouts and knows the consequences of drinking before she takes a sip, but still decides to drink at some times. This small aspect of the novel angered me, but it was integral to the story.

Rachel rides the train every day and observes the people around her. Her daily commutes to and from home take her by the same house, where she become slightly obsessed with the couple living there. One day she sees something different than the usual. This enrages Rachel and she takes her anger out by drinking more alcohol and harassing her ex-husband. Then she blacks out. Feeling guilty and not knowing what happened on a very important night, she starts investigating herself. She rips off small pieces of paper, writes down details, and then stuffs them in her purse. She wanted to be a part of something, but we find out quickly that sometimes it's not good to be in the inner circle. My favorite quote in the book...

"Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis."

I enjoyed this novel to rate it 5 stars. I don't normally read thriller/suspense novels, but this one surprised me. It is very hard to review this novel without giving details that I know a reader would want to discover themselves. So I'm basically saying to quit reading everyone's reviews and just go buy this book. I promise... you'll thank me later.

Jana's Top Ten Most Anticipated 2015 Debuts

For future Top Ten Tuesday topics & info on how to participate, click here! 

Hi all! Jana here. I've kind of taken over today's TTT because I could not narrow my list to just 10 books! As many of you know, I'm the host of the 2015 Debut Author Challenge (read about it and sign up here!), and I've spent the last few months talking with a ton of authors about their upcoming books and I'm so excited about so many of them! So here are 10 debuts I'm really excited about. Head over to my personal blog for 10 more!

1. Ruthless by Carolyn Lee Adams (July 14, 2015) 
Girl wakes up in the truck bed of a moving truck, ends up in a secluded mountain cabin with a serial killer, and escapes with her hunter at her heels. HELLO. Sign me up!

2. The Edge of Forever by Melissa E. Hurst (June 2, 2015) 
Time travel! And the main girl has a stalker! Sounds interesting.

3. Hello, I Love You by Katie M. Stout (June 9, 2015)
"A teen escapes to a boarding school abroad and falls for a Korean pop star in this fun and fresh romantic novel in the vein of Anna and the French Kiss.

4. Last Year's Mistake by Gina Ciocca (June 9, 2015) 
Told in alternating sections, LAST YEAR'S MISTAKE is a charming and romantic debut about loving, leaving, and letting go." Sounds like a fun romantic contemporary, perfect for beach time!

5. The Night We Said Yes by Lauren Gibaldi (June 16, 2015) 
"A fun, romantic read, perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen and Susane Colasanti!

6. Pretending to be Erica by Michelle Painchaud (July 21, 2015)
"Walking a razor’s edge, calculating every decision, not sure sometimes who she is or what she is doing it for, Violet is an unforgettable heroine, and Pretending to be Erica is a killer debut."

7. The Creeping by Alexander Sirowy (August 18, 2015) 
"Twelve years ago Stella and Jeanie vanished while picking strawberries. Stella returned minutes later, with no memory of what happened. Jeanie was never seen or heard from again."

8. For the Record by Charlotte Huang (TBA 2015) 
"Chelsea thought she knew what being a rock star was like . . . until she became one. After losing a TV talent show, she slid back into small-town anonymity. But one phone call changed everything."

9. Lock and Mori by Heather Petty (September 15, 2015) 
"...a female Moriarty teams up with her classmate Sherlock Holmes to solve a mystery in modern-day London, until the answers lead him too close to all that she's been hiding."

10. Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandiera (December 2015) 
"In a perfect world, sixteen-year-old Phoebe Martins’ life would be a book. Preferably a YA novel with magic and a hot paranormal love interest. Unfortunately, her life probably wouldn’t even qualify for a quiet contemporary. But when Phoebe finds out that Dev, the hottest guy in the clarinet section, might actually have a crush on her, she turns to her favorite books for advice. Phoebe overhauls her personality to become as awesome as her favorite heroines and win Dev’s heart. But if her plan fails, can she go back to her happy world of fictional boys after falling for the real thing?" I had to post the whole book synopsis because YAY!

Tell us the debuts you can't wait for!!

Bridget Wants to Know How You Find New Releases and Debut Novels

In preparing some of my Top Ten Tuesdays for 2015, I’ve been forced to enter an unfamiliar world: the world of new releases. In general, I don’t track new releases unless they’re by J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, in which case there’ll be enough press around them that I don’t have to go out of my way to do any research on them.

What I want to know is: how does the rest of the reading world find and know about all these new releases coming out? Am I living under a rock?

Writing about my Top Ten Most Anticipated Debut Novels for 2015 (which I’m just now realizing I did wrong, I just did 2015 new releases, but I’m not rewriting it now, sorry) was a huge struggle. I ended up culling a few HuffPost and Book Riot lists for books I thought I’d be interested in, and used those as a jumping-off point on Amazon to find “related items” that would also be released in 2015. I actually ended up with 11 books in the end, but—as I mentioned above—I’m pretty sure most of them aren’t debut novels at all. I know a few are, but certainly not the majority.

So, blogger friends, tell me: where do you find new releases, particularly debut novels, that strike your fancy? I peruse NetGalley on occasion, but much less these days as I have enough hard copy books to last me a while and it’s hard for me to concentrate when I’m reading on my iPad. (I’m actually thinking about selling it because I hardly ever use it, so I’m also trying to distance myself from it a little bit.) I also haven’t found a whole lot to love on NetGalley. I’ll occasionally find something that piques my interest, but by the time I’m approved for it, I’m not as interested as I was, and I forget about it. Out of all the titles I’ve downloaded from NetGalley, I’ve probably read 20% of them all the way through and enjoyed an even smaller percentage.

I’m also quite a bit less into YA than most of my TBTB compatriots, so while there seems to be no shortage of YA novels getting churned out, most of that volume is lost on me.

I’ve finally begun to use Twitter a bit more fluently (@thebookishmilso, should you want to follow me), and I’ve followed a couple of authors and a LOT of publishers, so maybe that will help? I don’t know. Guys, I’m really clueless here. Help a sister out?