After my very slow reading March, I decided to kickstart April with a thriller to get myself back in the reading game. I’ve had Confessions On The 7:45 by Lisa Unger on my nightstand since Christmas, tempted by this irresistible plot: a woman takes a train home from the city one night, confessing to a stranger that she saw her husband having sex with their nanny on their webcam. A few days later, the nanny disappears. Where is she, and did the woman on the train have anything to do with it?
Why I picked it up: Thrillers are a surefire way to get me out of a reading slump, even if I don’t always love them.
The mastery of Confessions On The 7:45 is in the slow, deliberate way that Unger peels the onion of the story. Chapters alternate between Selena and Martha, the woman on the train, but there is a lot of backstory to both women, and things get more complicated and twisted as the book progresses. I don’t want to give away anything so I’ll leave it at that.
A few complaints: 1) sometimes it was hard to keep the characters straight (were there too many?) and 2) I haven’t thought much about the book since I read it. This is a common issue I have with thrillers – I find them less filling and therefore ultimately unsatisfying. But Confessions on the 7:45 was worth the read and it definitely got me on track for a more productive month than last.
Confessions on the 7:45 was the 16th book of 2021.