After completing Paula Hawkin's first thriller novel The Girl on the Train, I can see why some readers may see the connection between last year's most popular novel Gone Girl. Both being thrillers with unique twists capture the interest of all readers.
The basic plot of The Girl on the Train is told from three different female perspectives; Megan, the victim, Rachel, the alcoholic and Anna, the perfect housewife. Although I never read Gone Girl, I did watch the movie- which in today's society "if I watched the movie, it's pretty much like reading the book right??" (wrong). Obvious similarities between the two include the different perspectives from unreliable narrators all leading to the big question: what really happened to X?
Other similarities include a man being accused for his wife's disappearance, when in reality neither were guilty. Gone Girl is pinned with a psychotic woman whereas The Girl on the Train is just a bunch of unreliable narrators whom you gradually grow to hate (at least that's how it was for me). One reader reviews the women as "...[U]nreliable narrators with something to hide. In fact, most of the characters in this novel, including the men, lack veracity, and are a self-serving and unsympathetic group with plenty of skeletons in their closets" (Amazon.com).
Two books cannot follow the exact same layout or there would lawsuits, so the differences in these two are Gone Girl has it's "victim" Amy plan to frame her husband for murder whereas in The Girl on the Train, it's very unclear who killed Megan Hipwell until the end when pieces of the puzzle start to become more clear. The sequence of events is another major factor in both books as Gone Girl moves forward in time after Amy goes missing with the occasional flashback and The Girl on the Train has multiple jumps forward and backward in time, mostly just a few months.
Perhaps I will give Gone Girl a try now that the hype over it has died down but for now I will continue my search for another great book.
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