I was really looking forward to this one, but was unfortunately thwarted in my enjoyment by my own delicate little flower feelings. As it turns out, this is one of those books I like thinking about, writing about, and talking about more than I do the actual experience of reading of it. It put me in a terrible mood, and made me very unhappy. Wait, I take back the delicate flower thing. I’m more like a sponge, soaking up the atmosphere around me. And the atmosphere here is DANK.
But, it was really well done! Actually, for the first half of the book I was really enjoying myself. That’s when the two strangers meet on the titular train. But while popular culture had led me to believe they were both equally in on the plan to murder people in each other’s lives and thus provide each other with the perfect alibi, what this is actually about is that one of the strangers is a psychopath and is obsessed with the idea of murder, and he manipulates the other man into a murder pact and then psychologically tortures him and stalks him until he gets his way, and the other man succumbs to the guilt. Watching Bruno (the psychopath) enact his grand plan was very entertaining, but as soon as he SPOILERS murder’s Guy’s (the other guy, ha, pun) wife and Guy starts to lose it, I stopped having fun END SPOILERS. It becomes a book then about succumbing to darkness and that’s not really my thing.
Recommend if you are less emotionally susceptible than I am, and the first half is very fun in an outrageous sort of way, before it descends into darkness.
[3.5 stars]
Chipping Away at Mt. TBR, July 2022—Book 17/31
CBR BINGO: Adapt
I went pretty literal on this one. This book was famously adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock. I have the movie checked out from the library but can’t bring myself to actually watch it.
