Wanted to like this more. A bit disjointed, not flowing story.
Thanks to author, publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

DNF. Couldn't get into this book no matter how hard I tried. The pace was glacial. I had high hopes, but it just didn't work, and I tried for weeks.

I was thrilled to be approved to read "The Mars Room" and even more thrilled to read it. The story is immediately engaging, each character is bright and immediate, and you crave learning more.

Romy Hall is sentenced to life in prison for killing a man who has stalked her since she was giving lap dances in a San Francisco "Gentleman's Club" called the Mars Room. Romy has had a rough life with an uninterested mother, occasional sex work and the lifestyle that goes with that. Romy is not stupid. She has made changes since she had her little boy, and one of those changes is to move to LA while her stalker is on vacation.

What hit me hardest is how completely powerless people who have no money or no one outside to run interference for them are in the justice system. Romy falls into both categories. She goes to prison and she has no way to communicate with her son or know what happened to him. Her lawyer does such a crappy job that even he feels bad about it. The other women she encounters in prison are similarly abandoned with no visitors and no one to even put a few bucks in their commissary so they can buy a bottle of liquid, rather than powdered, shampoo.

No more for fear of spoilers. This is a fine, strong novel that will hold you from first page to the last.

I really enjoyed reading this book but I don’t feel like it was particularly well written. Maybe my expectations were too high. In particular it was far too reminiscent of orange is in the new black, for obvious reasons. The topic of u.s. prisons is not one that is frequently thrown around in the u.s. the few representations of prisoners, especially female prisoners tend to stick out. The story itself in the mars room was captivating. I genuinely wanted to discover what would happen next but I was rarely surprised by the motivations or behavior of the characters. They behaved in a manner to be expected. There were a couple of chapters which seemed misplaced and disrupted the narrative flow.