Saw this on the WHSmith bestseller shelves while passing through Heathrow and picked up the audio book once I got home. Is it great literature? No, but it's entertaining and more-ish and I had a hard time pausing without trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Good holiday reading, and the Audible narration is particularly well done.

The book's main character is Rachel, the titular character, whose train pauses at a signal in a particular neighbourhood almost every day, and who daydreams up an ideal life for the beautiful couple she often sees in one of the houses there. But one day the woman goes missing, and Rachel thinks she may have seen something relevant. The book switches between Rachel and two other narrators, the woman who's gone missing, and the new wife of Rachel's ex-husband. As the story switches between the three women with different perspectives, and between the present and the past, the reader slowly puts together a picture of what is really happening.

Reading these reviews I see the book has been compared to "Gone, Girl" and to some extent I can understand that, but really I think the book is just about how many illusions and assumptions we have about other people and how everyone has a very different reality from what others see. There is no one single and clear "truth", everyone lies intentionally or not, and nobody is really able to see and understand the truth of another person's life. If there was one thing I didn't like it's how much of a mess the main character is - an alcoholic with various other issues that come to light over the course of the book, she is constantly making truly abysmal decisions to an extent that makes it a little hard to remain sympathetic with her, although the author does an excellent job trying. Overall enjoyed it, entertaining read that kept my interest.