I hate that stories about the dangers of not believing women are always so god damned timely, but…there you have it.

BELIEVE. WOMEN.

It’s not that hard.

So this story shows us “those women” – the women society as a whole doesn’t want to believe. A killer has been prowling the streets of South LA for more than a decade. Women have been dying horribly, but nobody looks too hard. After all, they’re prostitutes. They had it coming. That’s the risk when you do that kind of work, right? (Spoiler Alert: Fucking wrong. That’s wrong. And it’s disgusting.) And to add insult to injury, none of these women are well-off, and they’re all WOC, and most of them lived hard. All of these intersections just add layers and layers of reasons for law enforcement and society as a whole to just sweep their bodies under the rug.

But one of the women didn’t die. She recovered, and now she’s being stalked by a woman, but still – nobody’s listening to her. They think she’s crazy, or on drugs. Or maybe it’s PTSD – she’s just jumping at shadows.

To make this novel feel even more ‘of the time’ than the over-arching reality that we only believe women about basically anything they say when they fit within a very narrow set of expectations we have about every aspect of her appearance, approach, personality and the like, it’s also about the dangerous, immoral idiocy of the “Thin Blue Line.” See, one of These Women is a cop. She’s a former Homicide detective who was bumped down to Vice after a horrible accident that her former partner decided she was at fault for (although she demontrably wasn’t) and graciously decided to “cover for her” in order to show that she was always willing to go to bat for her fellow officers (because she planned to go for captaincy, which she of course got).

I feel like I should also say that this is NOT a police procedural, nor is it a police-narrative-driven novel. This story is about the dangers of misogyny and the importance of believing that women are people, and that they therefore should be afforded the same support, concern, and dignities as men.

I recommend this book full stop. It is really, really good. It is also very depressing in its realness. But I’d say if you like mysteries or thrillers, or really anything remotely connected to serial killers, but you’ve found yourself annoyed by the way that women in these stories tend to fit a few very narrow tropes, I’d give this one a shot.

The story focuses on six women, 5 of whom were street walkers, in South Central Los Angeles who were murdered by a serial killer. It is set in 2014, with flashbacks to 1999. The way the author writes, we get a feel for the factors that shaped each women's life.

Feel, Dorian, Julianna, Anneke, Marella and Essie are the women in this story. They will stay with you long after the story ends. The book is more a character study and doesn't focus on the serial killer, though that is revealed later in the book.

The book also gives you a peek into the mood and the ambience of that area and what the social scene was like at the time. This book moves at a good pace and keeps the reader engaged. Worth reading.

I would like to thank NetGalley for providing a copy of this book. These Women exceeded my expectations. It’s gripping as a crime/ suspense novel with a central mystery that is explored and revealed through the distinct voices of six main female characters. These women are all connected and their lives all affected in some way, by a series of murders with related patterns. The novel spans a period of over 15 years and is broken up into several parts, each told by a different voice. Each woman has an important part of the story to tell. We read about these women-- their goals, aspirations, fears, and frustrations with a world that undervalues their experience. The setting, the West Adams neighborhood in South Los Angeles, serves as a seventh character in a way. These Women explores a culture of victim blaming. It dissects how the criminal justice system can fail its most vulnerable citizens. This novel gives a voice to those that are often silenced and ignored by society. It shows how victims can often resign themselves to the notion that their voices will never be heard to the point where they start to question their worth and veracity of their recollection of events. This novel really resonated with me for that reason. This is a must read.

Written as a thriller in an invigorating way, this book also brings forward many tough issues in present and past Downton Los Angeles. Such issues as prostitution, race, and poverty. This was a perfect read during the current political and equality movement going on in our country!

One such part in the book which may seem insignificant in prior times, is when one of the characters describes why the houses in downtown LA have bars on the windows and doors due to the past LA riots in the ‘90s. As a Californian myself, this was not a fact I knew about the Los Angeles history. I truly appreciated that bit of insight.

Thriller wise, I think this story stood out as a part of human equal rights as well as your typical murder mystery! It was a fantastic read.

I really enjoyed this book. Aside from the serial killer story line in the novel, the author shines a light on the marginalized voices of sex workers living and working in South Los Angeles. Someone has been killing women and abandoning their bodies for the police to find. Because of what they do and where they live, people largely ignore the killings, allowing the serial killer to continue his hunt for almost 20 years. Sounds horrific, but as a black woman living in America, I wasn't really surprised about that part...people not caring. It seems like if you aren't from the right side of the tracks and living the caucasian American dream, no one cares.
The chapters in the novel are told from the perspectives of five different women living within this trodden down community. My favorite characters were Essie, the cop who eventually solves the crime I loved this because you get to hear from the voices of all sides of the story. While I did solve the mystery before finishing the novel (don't worry, I won't spoil it for you!) it was still a great read. Highly recommend if you're looking for a different spin on a who-dun-it murder mystery!

Wow! Poignant. Raw. Gripping. These women had me gripped from the very first page. Seriously, this was absolutely beautiful.
It was hard to continue sometimes it was so sad.

Thank you so much to netgalley for sending me a copy of this book. I wish I could like this book but i just did not mesh with this book. You might mesh with it tho

DNF 63%
Although a far cry from your traditional formulaic police murder mystery... I’m just not into reading a book from a police officer’s perspective right now. I could tell this would be no more than a 3 star read given the lack of robust character development, so decided to just quit and move on to something else.

No doubt the author is a talented writer, unfortunately it just wasn’t coming together for me in a way that was worth seeing it to the very end.

These Women Ivy Pochoda

Ivy Pochoda’s THESE WOMEN is an inspired novel and one of my favorites of the year so far--and for a very good and unexpected reason--this psychological thriller doesn’t focus on who the serial killer is or why he does what he does.

Instead, the suspense is built around five black and Latina women, most of them sex workers, living in the same area as sex workers who were killed in the 90s. The killer was never found. Now sex workers are being killed again in the same manner--slit throat and thrown from a car. The story follows these five women's intertwined lives in their neighborhood in south L.A.

‘Feelia opens the novel in 1999 and pulls you into her world with tough talk and street wisdom. She’s in the hospital because she forgot her own advice. When you work the streets, you’ve got to be “diligent.” The beep-beep-beep of the hospital machines sound in the background as she tells us about the hard game on the streets where she hangs with her 5th of Hennessy and pack of Pall Malls. How she didn’t pay attention that day when she was smoking and staring up at the trees that were dancing like a couple of drunk girls at a party—sway, sway, sway—and was talked into a car by a slick man who cut her throat and tossed her aside like garbage.

When Dorian's story starts, it’s 2014. Young girls gather at her fish shack, spouting profanity and taunting her. Dorian lost her daughter Lecia to the killer years ago and has lapses of recognizing her in other girls. Kathy, a sex worker, frequents the fish shack. Dorian tries to save another sex worker, Julianna, who looks like Dorian's dead daughter and who becomes a major target of the serial killer.

Pochoda adeptly creates a noir atmosphere throughout the novel with fires in the hills filling the air with smoke. Dead hummingbirds are left at Dorian's doorstep. Green parrots fly by and roost in the palms. NPR follows the news of a young black man shot by police at point-blank range. Class issues arise when Dorian loses a catering job because she won’t use the back door of a classy house, and the wife notices that Dorian knows her husband. No one in authority cares about sex workers dying, and Dorian continues over fifteen years to plague the authorities to find out who killed her daughter.

As their stories overlap and collide, we're drawn inevitably to the shocking identity of the serial killer.

Even the arrest of the serial killer disturbs the neighborhood, and even though justice is served, peace is not around the corner. I bought a copy of this beautiful, haunting novel so that I can reread it. THESE WOMEN should become a classic.

Thank you to #TheseWomen #NetGalley #HarperCollins for the ARC.

Though I already own one of Pochoda's earlier novels, this is actually the first time that I have read any of her books - and I can't wait to read more!! I really loved this book! Told in multiple voices, Pochoda really brings each of these women completely to life! The perspectives are all quite distinct, all revolve around serial murders around the South Los Angeles area. The majority of the victims are sex workers of some sort - but it soon becomes clear that there is a connection between the past and the 2014 present. It's such an impressive and well done novel. The setting really feels well-detailed and authentic, too. And while some of the perspectives are more stylized than others, as a whole this just really works! It's shockingly visual and totally fresh - not to mention just completely original (all the more surprising since serial killer stories don't usually feel all that new!). And while the plot points in a clear direction, it's almost interactive in the way that it allows the reader to piece it all together - ahead of the characters themselves. I would've liked a bit more to the end - but really, this is very satisfying and very fast-paced. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and I really can't wait to read more from her soon! Impressively done!

Thank you netgalley for this ARC.

I’ve read Ivy Pochada before and I really like her writing. The way she gets a story across makes the whole thing come alive. However, work could be done on her endings.

In this story, we are allowed into the lives of 6 women. Five have sections dedicated for them and one is tagged on to each section. The character development was incredible. I could see them and feel for them. I wanted to know so much more about them but I also felt like the way Pochada portrays them gave me everything I needed to know but without hitting me over the head with it. She has a beautiful way of letting information unfold at just the right times.

The ending left something to be desired. There were no clues leading you to the murderer until the very last section and I prefer to be able to pick up clues and figure it out along the way. I know that wasn’t the point of this novel. This was about women and violence and darkness and seeing people for who they are not what they are and all the roles women play in this world and about being a woman of color and vibrant and full of life and completely invisible all at the same time. And all of that comes through in this book. It is super well done and even with the way the ending is, it was still a terrific read and I can’t wait to read more from Ivy Pochada.

This is an excellent crime novel that is based on actual crimes that occurred in a Los Angeles neighborhood. There was a serial killer that was not apprehended for many years.

The author developed the story from the perspective of the women who were victims and their surviving relatives. Each character was vivid ly portrayed and the suspense built with each chapter.

I was surprised by the reveal of the killer and the ending of the novel. It was well done and I highly recommend this novel. I understand it will be a series for tv soon and would definitely recommend reading the book first.

This was the first book I had read by this author and will definitely be reading her earlier novels.

Twisted

A serial killer is mainly targeting prostitutes. His killing spree goes unsolved for many years. He stops, and fifteen years later, he starts again. What twisted mind is this? He also seems to be targeting Latino and black women. Perhaps, the most important takeaway from this book is that everyone matters. Did the police ignore the killings because the women were prostitutes? There is one detective who sees patterns. Essie is one determined woman, and she just might find the killer. Will anyone listen?

There is no doubt that this book is well-written. The style just was not for me. With a 4.6-star rating as of this review, I am in the minority. If you enjoy twisted tales about serial killers, you might appreciate this book. This book also had a message about how everyone matters, no matter who they are or what they do.

Wow, this book is not only a literary thriller but it is raw emotional and gritty. I raced through this pulse-pounding thriller faster than I wanted to, I read it in one sitting but I wanted this story to be longer because it was so good and so unique...it was full of suspense and mystery. Such a well crafted story.

These Women is never predictable and the nerve wracking tension it produces is enough to jar the most stoic thriller reader. I really enjoyed it and can easily see this novel being on many Year's Best lists for 2020...Including mine.

This is not the type of book I normally read and when I started it I really did not like it. Because it was a pre-publication copy, I decided to give it a chance, but had decided if I read 50 pages and still did not like it, I would not finish it. However, by the time I had read the 50 pages, I had begun to care about the characters and their lives. Plus, I wanted to see how the mystery turned out. The mystery is not the main point of the story but hooked me. Other themes include social commentary and the love of a mother and the quest for justice in the face of societal apathy.

THESE WOMEN is a unique book, a bit unclassifiable and totally captivating. We follow the thread of a serial killer who has killed more than fourteen women over fifteen years in the underbelly of LA, but the book is not a thriller and it is completely about solving the mystery of who the serial killer is (though the reveal is pretty thrilling). Instead, it's about women who are affected by violence everyday in the bleak streets of the city Ivy Pochoda portrays. Each section follows a different woman as the story slowly unravels.

Pochoda's writing is easy to get lost in; her characters are fully-formed and jump off the page. As we jump from survivors, to grieving mothers, to female detectives, the story becomes enveloping and complete. I really liked how she juggling all of the different narratives and points of view. It made the reveal at the end earned and pretty shocking. The book is not a salacious story about a serial killer though -- it's about women's reaction to violence around them and whether or not it will swallow them up, or they will rise above it. It's a sad book, not a light read by any means, but certainly an important piece of art from a wonderful writer.

4.5 stars

Six women from different walks of life. A series of murders, fifteen years apart. One particularly destitute area of South Los Angeles where chaos and violence run rampant. A society that collectively ignores the pleas of those women who are deemed to be of dubious moral character, based solely on preconceived notions, imagined or otherwise. A place where prejudice goes beyond merely the color of one’s skin, extending also to one’s occupation, the way one speaks, and overall way one lives their life. This is the world where author Ivy Pochoda sets her heartbreaking yet masterfully told story, and in so doing, gives voice to women who are often forsaken, their thoughts and feelings usually dismissed, their words rarely ever believed.

Though this is billed as a mystery / thriller, it is apparent very early on in the book that “solving the mystery” of the murders, while necessary, is not as important as letting the stories of these women be told, allowing their voices to be heard. As is expected, of course the perpetrator of the crimes is identified in the end — it was an easy guess, one already figured out a few chapters in, before the first narrative segment was even over. The way he is found out though is anticlimactic, downplayed, sparse on details — we don’t know too much about him, his background, why he became the way he was, even the details of how he committed his crimes are not entirely clear. But that is the beauty of how Pochoda structured the narrative — there’s no need to dwell too much on the killer because in the end, who he is doesn’t really matter. What matters are the women — the victims of his crimes and the family members who get left behind to deal with the aftermath. Especially poignant are the segments about the mothers — Dorian, Mrs. Holloway, etc. — whose only way to grieve is to make sure their children’s deaths are not ignored and brushed aside as though their existence never mattered in the first place; their mission then, becomes making sure what was done is never forgotten.

For me, despite having already figured out the “mystery” way early on, I kept turning the pages because I wanted to know whether justice would prevail in the end, and whether these women, ignored for so long, would finally be heard. Reading this book made me reflect on a lot of things. It made me think about family, society, the impact of individual actions and behavior, etc. — most importantly, it served as a reminder of the differences in each of our circumstances and the dangers of passing judgment, especially in those situations where there the understanding of those circumstances is lacking.

These Women is a powerful story, one that absolutely deserves to be read. With that said though, this is not an easy read by any means — many of the scenes are dark, gritty, gruesome, violent, and there is profanity galore. It can also be a frustrating read, at times even painful, especially in light of the blatant injustices that take place time and time again throughout the story. But yet, there is also grace, hope, resilience, and most significantly, the steadfast courage of these women who, despite being constantly ignored, still refuse to be silenced. A difficult read, but definitely a worthy one!

Received ARC from Ecco (HarperCollins) via NetGalley.

I had high expectations for this book as the premise sounded so interesting and I was excited for a "literary thriller" that dealt with "these women" who are constantly overlooked, scorned, ignored and dismissed. However, it fell a little flat for me.

This is definitely a slow-burn and I was about halfway through the book before I felt like I had an idea of what was going on. The biggest issue for me was the format. I loved the writing; I felt totally transported to Los Angeles in 2014. I felt like I could clearly envision the streets, the houses, the people -- everything. However, the book is written in 5 sections, each narrated by a different character and only from their POV. This felt extremely disjointed to me, as we got to know a character really well and then never heard from them again, leaving too many important parts of each of their stories completely unresolved.

Overall, once I felt engaged I enjoyed the rest of the book. However, I would not describe this as a "thriller" of any sort as it's slow and character-driven with the search for the serial killer not being the main focus of the story.

Thanks to NetGalley, Ecco, and HarperCollins for the advanced copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

This is something that might not have usually crossed my radar, but I was drawn in by the combination of the cover and the synopsis. These Women was a slow burn for me, which I enjoyed - as much as you can "enjoy" a story of this subject matter. I always love a good character drawn story and this felt very much like a character study of a group of women whose lives were interconnected by one person/event. I appreciated the time spent with each one and the space to get a feel for who they were and how their environment had molded them into who they were at the point we meet them.

For me, aside from the mystery of the killer, this ultimately came down to how women of color are so often discarded or made invisible in cases like these. There were so many instances throughout where the victims, or anyone in their circle for that matter, were pushed to side, silenced, and judged that felt so close to what goes on currently and it made this feel like much more than just a fictional story for me. As much as it hurts when these worlds collide, I appreciate how grounded it is in reality. This was more a story about the women with the killer in the background.

Overall, this was a great read. Although the subject matter is a tough one and may be triggering for some, I did enjoy this, mainly for the focus and character study on the women involved - the victims and in the community.

These Women is like a time machine immersing the reader in South Los Angeles in 2014, in a neighborhood with an abundance of sex workers but also families who wish the neighborhood were clean from vice.

From the points of view of Dorian, the owner of a fish shack who has not been able to come to terms with her daughter’s murder years earlier, Julianna, a self-destructive exotic dancer with a passion for photography, Essie, a brilliant but unfairly discredited detective, Marella, a performance artist, and Anneke, a nurse trying to beautify the neighborhood but ignoring the chaos at home, with interludes from Feelia, a survivor, the story of a serial murderer operating over fifteen years unfurls with each woman unknowingly carrying a piece of the mystery.

The narrators struggle to make themselves heard and to have power in a patriarchal society that dismisses their voices and inflicts violence upon them, and as new murders strike closer to home, they start to question their positions and challenge how others see them—and how they see themselves.

I’ve adored Visitation Street and Wonder Valley, Ivy Podocha’s previous books, and I felt the same way about These Women. Granted, the story is dark and deals with difficult themes, but I felt the ending was satisfying and even hopeful. Additionally, the writing is phenomenal. Podocha’s phrasings and analogies are so singular and so evocative, they are perfection.

I highly recommend These Women to fans of literary mysteries such as Long Bright River and Please See Us as well as to readers of literary fiction. Pochoda’s writing is absolutely beautiful, if at times devastating.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco/Harper Collins for providing an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.