Paula Hawkins

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Top Ten Best Books I Read In 2015

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. Where has this year gone?! As we’ve only got a few weeks left, here’s the ten books I’ve loved the most this year. In June I talked about my favourite books I’d read so far this year so if you want to know about some other awesome books and to see which ones made both lists shimmy over here.

For once I’ve put these in order, going from ten to my number one book of the year.

FullSizeRender (91)10. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
I love me some thrillers with unreliable narrators and The Girl on the Train certainly has that! I loved how Rachel wasn’t reliable or even likable a lot of the time and it was one of those mysteries that left me guessing till the gripping finale.

 
FullSizeRender (82)9. Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid by Sid Lowe
Barcelona and Real Madrid’s rivalry is legendary and Fear and Loathing in La Liga delves deep into both clubs history and looks at Spain’s history too. This was a fascinating read, it was sometimes a bit dense and a little dull when it was talking about players I didn’t know about but on the whole it was great read.

 
FullSizeRender (99)8. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
I thought A Monster Calls was just a children’s book and I was so wrong! Yes it has illustrations and is about a young boy but it deals with grief and death and abandonment so well. It really makes you think and the beautiful passages go so well with the often scary drawings.

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REVIEW: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

FullSizeRender (91)Rachel catches the same train every morning to work. She knows all the stops and that the train always waits at the same signal each time. She uses that time to look into the houses and gardens that back on to the track, she’s even started to feel like she knows the people living there and names them “Jess and Jason”. Their life that she sees from the train window looks perfect, ten times better than her own life. One day she sees something shocking and now everything’s changes, Rebecca slowly becomes embroiled in “Jess and Jason’s” lives and she’ll show everyone she’s more than just the girl on the train.

Rachel is an incredibly unreliable narrator. She’s a drunk and often has blackouts where she can’t remember anything that’s happened. This is sometimes frustrating for you as the reader as Rachel never seems to learn from her mistakes and her drinking just causes more problems for herself. That being said, it’s been a while since I’ve read a book with an unreliable narrator and it adds an extra layer of tension and mystery. (more…)

Friday 56: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda’s Voice. The aim is to share a few sentences of a book (whether it’s the one your’re currently reading or not) so other people might be enticed to pick it up.

Here’s the rules:

– Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
– Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it)
– Post it.
– Add the url of your post to the Linky on Freda’s most recent post.

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“She doesn’t have kids, then?” he asks, and I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the second the subject of children comes up, I can hear an edge in his voice and I can feel the argument coming and I just don’t want it, can’t deal with it, so I get to my feet and tell him to bring the wine glasses, because we’re going to the bedroom.

That was from page 56 of the hardback of The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins