The Woman in Carriage 3 by Alison James @bookouture #NetGalley #TheWomaninCarriage3 #bookreview

The Woman In carriage 3 by Alison James

Published by Bookouture

Publication Date: 22nd May 2023 (ebook), 7th June 2023 (paperback)

Most importantly, I need to say a huge thankyou to the team at Bookouture for the opportunity to read this book via NetGalley. I am happy to provide my unbiased opinions by way of thanks.

Book Description: An ordinary journey. A shocking secret. And the perfect murder…

Hattie travels on the 18.53 train home every night. She sits in the same seat, in the same carriage, and sees the same people. The unwritten rule is you don’t talk to your fellow passengers, but Hattie has been watching them all for months now to distract herself from her own troubles.

Then one night a commuter suddenly drops dead. And the terrible accident changes everything.

In the aftershock of the tragic death, the group of strangers huddled around the two tables in carriage 3 strike up a conversation. Boundaries are shattered, connections are made and Hattie becomes tangled up in the lives of her fellow passengers as they travel to and from London every day.

But Hattie has no idea what she’s letting herself in for. The ordinary people on her ordinary journey all have dangerous secrets. When another commuter is killed, Hattie suspects someone in carriage 3 is responsible. Who can she trust? And is the truth closer to home and more dangerous than she could have guessed?

My Thoughts:

My warning regards this book: it starts slowly and chugs along gently for quite a while.; I didn't warm to any of the characters in the first part of the story and especially wanted to give Hattie a good shake and tell her to grow up. But I recommend you stick with it because all of a sudden, things take off at quite a pace and don't let up.
Finding herself single again and living back at her parents' home, Hattie engages in a string of blind dates with internet matches and enjoys far too much alcohol than is good for her. Then one evening, the train she regularly travels home on grinds to an emergency stop and the unwritten rule of London commuting is broken, forcing a small group of the passengers to actually engage with one another. They exchange names and vague details about themselves and somehow manage to create a Whatsapp group to keep in touch with each other.
The group is extremely diverse in their ages and occupations, but one of the group catches Hattie's eye and sets her heart racing: Casper Merriweather. Despite his dashing good looks, he's not popular with all of the group. The mousy Bridget avoids speaking to him, and the more mature Julian - a judge, no less - is particularly wary of him, and warns Hattie to be careful. 
Then another incident on their commute, this time much closer to home, pulls their group apart as quickly as it formed. None of the group knows who to trust any more, and they all avoid that regular journey, each stating various excuses for not being on the train. The author cleverly plants seeds of doubt about each of the group in that first section of the book - the part that seems slow is actually the part where the reader forms a lot of opinions about each passenger, without realising it at the time.
The latter part of the book rattles along at a fair old pace - I don't want to say any more about the plot or characters here as you need to let the bombshells drop as the writer intends in order to get the full effect. I was jumping around on my seat at certain points, willing different characters either to take action or dodge situations and I always feel a book has hit its mark when it evokes such strong feelings in me.
Thank you, Alison James, for a fantastic rollercoaster of a ride on the 1853 - any doubts I had at the start were truly blown away by the end of the book, and I will be recommending this to anyone wanting an edge of the seat read.

About the Author:

Alison James was born in the Cotswolds but spent most of her formative years abroad. She studied languages at Oxford, then became a journalist and author, returning to university after her two children to take a law degree. After a three-year stint as a criminal paralegal, she worked as a commercial copywriter and then a TV storyliner, before coming full circle to write fiction again.