I love me a good thriller but I didn’t love this. I expected to, given the glowing recommendations from several friends, but I only liked it.
Rachel is not dealing well with her divorce nor with her ex-husband’s new marriage and new baby. She can’t deal well with anything because she’s a barely functional alcoholic. This proves troublesome as she makes a less-than-totally-reliable witness or reporter of events, given her blackouts and general poor decision-making skills. During her daily surveillance of her old house and its vicinity — from a moving train, mind you — she sees something alarming, and in an effort to be helpful, involved, and really just relevant, she gets all up in that business.
She’s somehow still pretty likable given the insane shit she does; perhaps it’s a Rooting for the Underdog thing.
Rachel’s ex-husband, his new wife whose name escapes me at the moment, their neighbors who are a focus of Rachel’s obsessive behavior, Rachel’s roommate Cathy, the police, and a mystery man are at varying times exactly what they seem to be, or not at all what they seem to be. Megan, one of the former neighbors and surveillance target is a particularly tragic and interesting character. She was fucked up in such a sad, sad way.
It’s hard to say much while remaining spoiler-free, so I will just say this: I actually found the constant state of confusion pretty tiresome after a while.
