Despite its flaws, an intriguing feminist thriller.
The hunt for a notorious female vigilante in seedy 1970s New York City reverberates five decades later for three generations of women.
Margot Cooper’s perfect life as the wife of an A-list Hollywood actor and as a lifestyle influencer implodes one morning in 2024 when her husband’s sexual indiscretions are shared over social media. With her teenage daughter, Skye, Margot flees to her childhood home in Pittsburgh, now inhabited by her older sister, Julia. As Margot and Julia take the opportunity to sort through their parents’ possessions in the attic, Skye pulls out a box of newspaper clippings and photos that suggest her grandmother, Ginger Daughtry, might have been the notorious Lady X who, in 1977, committed violent acts against abusive men—possibly including murder. Skye and Julia, a journalist, are eager to investigate further. The narrative then flashes back to that gritty summer when the “Son of Sam” terrorized the Big Apple and disco ruled the dance floors. Ginger and her roommates, Rachel and Faye, uneasily navigate New York life, which is dominated by predatory men, until one of them is sexually assaulted. When the police are unresponsive, the women decide to take matters into their own hands with cans of spray paint, and Lady X is born. Author Fader sets up an intriguing premise that doesn’t quite work in its execution. The 1977 sections, with their evocative depictions of a bankrupt city on the edge and the power of female friendship against a patriarchal system, overshadow the meandering modern-day plotline. Margot, the epitome of wealthy white privilege, is off-putting in her narcissism, feeling sorry for herself instead of trying to understand her mother’s rage, and the male characters are cardboard cliches, from the gay best friend to a villainous cop.
Despite its flaws, an intriguing feminist thriller.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593983669
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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