This was a fun thriller with lots of twists and turns. I highly recommend carving out some time and reading it over a day or two, though, because there are a lot of character names to keep track of and it makes it easier when you say inside the story longer.
This book is told from the point of view of three characters — Selena Murphy (who has a successful career, a worthless husband, and two young sons,) Anne (who is having an affair with her boss,) and Pearl (a teenager who ends up living with a con artist she calls “Pop.”) After catching her husband sleeping with their children’s nanny, Geneva, on their nanny cam, she takes the 7:45pm train home and gets caught up in conversation with a stranger, Martha. Martha shares about her own trouble at work with her boss, and Selena spills about her husband and their nanny. The observation is made that everything would be easier if Geneva just disappears, which Selena writes off as just a passing expression. Unfortunately, though, the next day, Geneva really does disappear, and Selena and her husband are the last people to have seen her alive.
I thought it was fairly easy to tell who was who in this book, and didn’t find many of the early reveals surprising. But I was still intrigued by how the characters related (or didn’t relate) to each other and their interactions.
Outside of a basic thriller, though, this is a really interesting book about the meaning of identity — who we show ourselves as to the world around us, who we really are deep inside, whether or not we can ever really change who we are. I think the author is saying we all have a shot at becoming better people, but at the same time, it takes a lot to leave all that baggage behind, and sometimes, you really do have to become someone else entirely to make it work.