Book Club- The Girl on the Train

/ Uncategorized

The book we read this month was The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I know some of you are probably looking forward to reading it, or seeing the movie, so there won’t be any spoilers here. It was a thrilling read!  All of us in book club agreed that this book reminds us a lot of Gone Girl and several of my other friends have said the same.  I personally liked it better than Gone Girl because the characters seemed more real and I actually felt like I was rooting for some of them.  However, the ladies in book club were split.  Diana liked Gone Girl better, Erin was on the fence and Betsy liked this one more also.  It has that thriller/suspense quality that made it a fast read, I stayed up late reading because I didn’t want to put it down!  While the quality of the writing wasn’t the best, the story more than made up for that.  It is about a woman named Rachel (she even spells it right, he he) who observes people in her old neighborhood from the train on her daily commute.  One day something goes horribly wrong and she inserts herself into a dangerous situation.  I definitely think this book was worth the read and am excited to see the movie.  This book brought about a lot of interesting discussions with the book club ladies.  We obviously discussed all of the characters but had an in-depth conversation about the main character. While we couldn’t relate to all of Rachel’s decisions we all agreed we could see how her actions went as far as they did.  We’ve all done things we’re not proud of and the author did a great job of portraying that in a very real way.

Book rating: Recommend and would read again, (8/10)

Since the book takes place in London, I made an English-inspired menu.  Here’s what we had:

• English cheeses with bread and crackers
• Mushy peas
• Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Orange Gin & Tonic (recipe below)

Our next read is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami if you’d like to follow along.  Don’t forget, I also have a Pinterest board with all of the books our club has read or is reading, so go check it out! I’d love to discuss these books with you too, so if you have thoughts let’s discuss there.

Have you read The Girl on the Train or Colorless?  What else are you guys reading right now?  I always need reading recommendations!

Orange Gin & Tonic

Rather than share a wine or beer review, I wanted to make Gin & Tonics because that’s Rachel’s drink of choice in the book (and of mine at home too). I put a slight fall twist on it, by using orange instead of lime juice and I think it might be how I drink Gin & Tonics from now on! You may have noticed I have a bit of an orange obsession now that fall is here, but it’s a tasty obsession so I figured you wouldn’t mind. 😉

Fill a glass with ice and add the O.J. and gin, then top with the tonic water and stir. Garnish with some orange peel.

Cheers!

This post contains affiliate links