Hitting 100 and a book review

This is it, my 100th post, which is pretty good going. For me.

Well, not really; I used to have a blog a millennium ago and I can’t tell you how many posts I wrote but 100 is decent for this new decade of writing I find myself in.

With self-congratulations out of the way I thought I’d take this post to also be a bit self-serving and talk about my opinions [SHOCK! HORROR]. 

I recently read The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins.

It was basically the book of 2015; it debuted at number 1 on the New York Times best selling list and stayed there for 13 weeks. Compared to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, it is best described as a run of the mill murder-mystery but critics would refer to it as a psychological thriller.

I take part in a book club and this came up and I was intrigued because I’d heard many things about it, some good, some bad. It’s not my kind of book in the slightest but I’m very open minded about literature. You never know what will hit you in the feels so I gave it a whirl.

This is where the opinions come in so if you’re not interested or haven’t read it/ don’t want spoilers please don’t let your eyes go any further!

I didn’t like it. That’s not to say I didn’t like the genre [I’m a YA, paranormal romance, sci-fi, horror, total fiction kind of gal], because I enjoyed the brain works but I didn’t like the characters, the story, the style [despite how well I thought it suited the story I didn’t like the writing ‘flair’ of the author]… It’s strange to read something that you’ve heard so much about but don’t harbour the same feelings as SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE but there you go. It’s not really happened to me before so I thought I’d tell you of this strange occurrence.

Reading a book you don’t enjoy is hard but sometimes has to be done [take school, for example… we’ve all been there… hello Lord of the Flies], the funny thing is this book was so easily readable I read it in 2 or 3 days. The speed of the writing was smart, the syntax used meant you eyes slid over the words like a yacht through the sea. Before I knew it I was closing in on the end. The plot, which had dragged torturously through the lives of the most abhorrent people I’ve ever read about, finally opened up and the pay-off was, whilst obvious, satisfying! You may be thinking but, Sam, you said you hated the book, how can you like the end? Well, voice in my head and now voice in your head, that’s just life, sometimes. You have to take the bad and the good. The bad doesn’t make the good better just like the good doesn’t make the bad better… or something. I’d say to anyone thinking of reading it; read the first 50 and then skip to the last 50 pages. You’ll probably not miss much.

This seems like a harsh review, if that’s what you can call this, and I’m not one to hate on something for the sake of it. I don’t hate it, I just felt like I missed the point.

If you want to see what other books I’m reading I generally instagram them; let me know if you read this and what you thought about it. I’m looking forward to going to book club and discussing it with others; we’ll no doubt have a good debate.

Sam