My first Buddy Read with Anne (and my first in general) proved to be a total success. Not only in terms of enjoying the book, but also with regard to our Buddy Read which will not have been our last one. 
 So, ,,The Girl on the Train" is the novel everyone talked about last year, everyone read (except for Anne and me) and everyone either loved or hated - it is hard to find an opinion set right inbetween both sides. I don't feel sorry at all for jumping on the bandwagon at this and positioning myself at the ,,loved it" side. After having read many books which were rather difficult to get through lately, ,,The Girl on the Train" (or the Traingirl, as Anne and I called it for the fun of it) was fast-paced and kept me guessing about the next twists and turns. It is not your typical mystery novel where you have your murder mystery, your investigator and then, somewhere down the road, the solution. This book was rather told through the eyes of the potential perpetrators. One character turned out to be more fucked up than the other, and if you go into this novel thinking that Paula Hawkins will introduce you to likeable characters ... then I am sorry to disappoint you. The word likeable seemingly does not even exist in Paula Hawkins' writer jargon. 
 However, this does not mean that ,,The Girl on the Train" was about characters you could not care for. I did not like any of them, but through the course of the story, I began to care for one of the characters, and most of them ((view spoiler)[except for Anna and Tom (hide spoiler)]) were developed in such a good way that you at least felt like you could understand their motivations, their character backgrounds. Paula Hawkins does not write about characters you would like to be friends with. She writes about characters who did everything wrong they could have done wrong, and she does an incredible job at that. The sad truth is, women like Rachel, Anna or Megan do exist in this world. Maybe not in exactly the same way with the same background, but they do exist, and that's why ,,The Girl on the Train" felt so realistic to me. 
 Yet there are quite a few things to criticize in this novel. First of all, it felt like Paula Hawkins characterized her female protagonists through the men they were married to; shaped not by their individuality, but rather solely by their marriage - Anna even more so than Megan. In addition, the reader was kept in the dark about the mystery because of a simple alcohol-caused blackout - a plot approach which feels outdated and clumsy to me. It added to the level of tension and suspense, but still bothered me throughout reading the novel. Many people cannot talk about this book without comparing it to ,,Gone Girl", and while I have not read this book and intend to do so later this year, I get where those opinions are coming from what I have heard of Gillian Flynn's writing. 
 The book's structure is perhaps what sets it apart from other novels of the same genre. We have three female first-person narrators - Rachel, Megan and Anna - who are telling the story from their own points of view, and Rachel gets all the chapters with odd numbers throughout the course of the story, amplifying the impression of her character being odd. I liked this structure, and Paula Hawkins must soon have figured out one important benefit of writing her story this way: She was able to tell us only what she wants us to know. We have to rely on the first-person-narrators, which seems to be even more of a paradox if you consider how unreliable each of them is. In the end, I felt like this book could not have been half as good if Paula Hawkins had told it straight through without different time flats and narrators. And her writing is fabulous. Maybe not as good as one might desire, but also not as bad as one might fear, and it kept me hooked from the beginning to the ending, without feeling bored for even one moment. 
 In conclusion, ,,The Girl on the Train" was a fast read, a quick experience, something which fitted my mood at exactly the right time. If I had chosen to read it some weeks earlier or later, maybe it would only have received two stars, because it is a novel you have to be in the right mood for or you will hate it, hate its structure, its characters, maybe even the plot. I understand and respect everyone who does not like this, and yet I am glad to have picked it up, to have read it along with Anne and enjoyed the hell out of it. 
 Recommended for those who are in the right mood for a mystery which will keep you riveted by it if only you give it a chance to hook you. 
 And if you have read thus far, please take a look at Anne's review as well.