[The Girl on the Train is] also the latest in a long line of texts that channel women’s rage at living under patriarchy. It offers an escapist fantasy, but unlike most fantasies, the escape is not into a more perfect world, just one where women can call bullshit, some more murderously than others, on the increasingly impossible expectations that legislate our lives.
So writes Anne Helen Peterson at BuzzFeed about why thrillers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train have exploded in popularity over the past five years.