Book: Lady X
Author: Molly Fader
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year: 2026
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Los Angeles, 2024
Margot Cooper’s life explodes after she discovers that her A-list actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media. Desperate to get away from the world – and the paparazzi – Margot flees to her childhood home, with her teenage daughter in tow.
But home isn’t the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she and her sister find damning evidence about a mysterious vigilante named Lady X, including a blurry newspaper photo from the 1970s of a woman who looks an awful lot like their mother. It turns out that Margot’s husband isn’t the only family member harboring secrets.
New York City, 1977
Ginger Daughtry is living her best life with her two beloved roommates, until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from the police, the young women take things into their own hands and find themselves igniting a movement that suddenly takes New York City by storm.
Soon what began as a little bit of revenge against terrible men – vandalism here and there, singed collectively as Lady X – starts to take on a life of its own. Their enigmatic reputation spirals beyond their control with copycat criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic Lady X. When a body is found fallen – or pushed – from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point.
But Lady X has vanished into thin air.”

Review : Lady X is not for everyone. Lady X is a novel full of thick, intoxicating, divine rage that fills your chest cavity, runs down your fingers, and sizzles off your skin as you recount the statistics of women who will be assaulted by men in their lifetimes; as you field yet another “you should smile”; as unwanted fingers run up your arms and legs to touch tattoos without consent; as you recall being asked, by a man, if you’re on your period. It’s the rage of thousands of years of patriarchy; the idea that feminism somehow has nothing to do with global atrocities, and being told that it’s worse somewhere else, so you should be grateful. Lady X is a heralding beacon in a bleak, dark, inky black night sky. It’s timely in a way that this subject will never not be timely without radical, dramatic, civilization altering change – it’s pointed, it’s aggressive, it’s feral, and yet it’s deeply soft, prodding the softness of your humanity and heart with fingers that gently turn your head and say “don’t look away”.

Lady X is a vigilante masterclass on how meekly our culture has shifted over the last fifty years, revealing the dark truth that while women have only had access to bank accounts and credit cards without their husband’s approval since 1974, the culture of men doing so much more than taking advantage of women has hardly changed in all that time. While the culture has certainly shifted, at least in part thanks to #metoo, the truth is that women still make a fraction of what men make in the workforce, are continuously being legislated against, often without exception for medical emergencies or anomalies, and still face the backroom absurdities and assaults that happened in the 70s. Only now, with a president who has openly spoken (and been found guilty of!!) about assaulting women; with younger generations of young men coming into the political field with open misogyny and a bloodlust for the voting rights and the bodily autonomy of women. Molly Fader has perfectly encapsulated the energy that sizzles and dances through every person who has ever been assaulted or harmed at the hands of men who have let their belief in male superiority take complete control. She’s written a novel that hits the button labeled “Rage” that sits in the very center of my chest and flung it right where it hurts. And it’s perfection.

Written between the perspective of Ginger Daughtry in 1977 and her daughter, Margot Cooper in 2024, Lady X jumps between narratives with ease, only ever leaving me frustrated at critical points in the story arc. The unfolding mystery of who Lady X is and what might have happened to her is a thread tying two generations of women together as they simultaneously navigate what it’s like to live in a world where men take and take and take. And before you get upset at how misandrist this sounds, Lady X is the perfect embodiment of the understanding that while not all men are the cause of assault, all women have been or know someone who has been assaulted by a man. Lady X became a folk hero, during a time when New York City was embroiled with the Son of Sam, labor shortages in the police force, and a rolling, city-wide blackout. Created perfectly to fit into our real world, Lady X could have easily come to fruition in real time in 1977, or 2024, or 2025. Lady X became a vigilante figure who gave entire groups of people, not just women, the sense that they could speak up, they could point the finger at their abusers, those who have continuously gotten away with cruelty, and that they could enact real change that might make the world a better, softer place for themselves and other marginalized folks.

Fader has created a world that feels so real, that speaks so pointedly to the time we’re living in and all that’s come before us to get us to where we are, that she goes so far as to write in a Lady X campaign that, fictionally, took place during Trump’s second inauguration. It was so pointed, so necessary, so perfectly, seamlessly correct for the time that I found myself weeping. This is not for everyone. It’s for those who have a belief that a better world could exist, those who dream of a matriarchy, of a third way forward, those who have been hurt and know people who are hurting, and those who wish, desperately, for there to be some small measure of justice in this world. Or, maybe not so small justice. Lady X is a guttural scream in the night, a shattering of that hard exterior shell that keeps you safe and looking the other way, it’s our survival instinct screaming, crying out that yes, this is how it changes.

Advice : I would be remiss not to mention content warnings before sending you to the bookshelves in May 2026. Lady X mentions sexual assault, rape, physical abuse, battery, police brutality, harassment, stalking, catcalling, solicitation of a minor, sexual exploitation, cheating, and vigilante violence. That being said, if you feel you can read the above list in a safe way, this book is an excellent read and perfect for anyone who would like to see the bad guys get what’s coming to them. I flew through this one and found it to be utterly unputdownable. I highly recommend pre-ordering it.