Pub date: 5/23/23
Genre: mystery/suspense
Quick summary: Florida and Dios are released from an overcrowded prison at the height of the COVID epidemic. But prison isn't the only thing the two have in common - and Dios will chase Florida in an effort to make her admit the truth.

Ivy Pochoda knows how to write a dark book! I could feel the grittiness of the Arizona prison in these pages, and she did a great job drawing the characters of Florida and Dios. I was captivated by the story of these two women, as well as that of Detective Lobos, who was trying to sort out what happened. The audiobook was really well done, and I enjoyed listening to this one on the my walks. I actually had to reread the ending in the text (I had listened to it) because I was so surprised by it!

This won't be a book for everyone, but if you like untold stories, atmosphere, and complex characters, or you enjoyed THESE WOMEN by Pochoda, give this one a try!

Thank you to MCD for my e-ARC and Macmillan Audio for my audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think I see what this book was trying to do -- there's an undercurrent of McCarthy and western noir but also something a little off which I can't totally place. I think that the narrative was trying too many things for me to really make much sense of it. One thing I will say is that the prose felt cloying in a way that perfectly echoed the climate of the book and what the characters were doing.

3 stars.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting story. It had several different voices telling the story. The writer’s words really drew a picture. Her imagery was beautiful. That being said, I felt like the story moved slowly and was often times confusing. Still worth the read.

3.5

I know nothing of thrillers but I really enjoyed this?

I loved the insight to the prison system, and just the story as a whole was extremely interesting. I will say that I was surprised at how much more depth there was to this novel.

I couldn’t get into this one. The writing was good, and the characters interesting especially with the prison setting and the pandemic. Unfortunately for me there was nothing to keep me reading.

I was confused by a modern-day novel occurring during COVID being called a Western, so I looked up the definition:
Western is a literature, film, and television genre. Westerns are primarily set in the American Old West between the late eighteenth century and late nineteenth century and tell the stories of cowboys, settlers, and outlaws exploring the western frontier and taming the Wild West.
This book doesn't fit any of that description, and I'm more than a little upset that I was pulled in by that part of the summary since I loved Lone Women, Camp Zero or Chain-Gang All-Stars are more deserving of this moniker.
Not recommended, needs editing and just in general didn't care for the story or characters. Difficult to finish.

So this one needs to be a movie. It would be an action movie, but it would have a palpable sadness about it as well.

I loved this. I've found that I love all the books I've read from this author. I found out that she works with people who live in challenging circumstances in real life and you can sense that authority in her work. Her characters feel real.

Definitely not for people searching for some light escapism, but if you want to see another (darker) side of life, Pochoda will take you there.

Excellent read!

This is not my typical read, so I’m glad I received an early review copy.

Sing Her Down is such a unique story from such a specific point in time… think back to the darkest times of Covid lockdowns. Then imagine being in prison at the same time, completely removed from the horror of the pandemic but stuck in your own horror story.

Loneliness takes on a completely new definition. So does freedom.

And that’s what Ivy Pochoda shows us what that reality could be through multiple perspectives.

Thank you NetGalley for the book!

This is a gritty Western set in Los Angeles. The writing is brilliant, and it's a gripping cat-and-mouse game that explores violence experienced and perpetrated by women.

This was the first time I have read Ivy Pochoda and will absolutely read another of her books!

What I loved:
1. The writing is stunning - descriptive, rich and full.
2. I loved the scenes in LA - I felt like I was there with the characters!
3. Was a book I would not normally have read!

What I wished were different:
1. It was a little abstract for me :)
2. Characters were so complex that we could have done with fewer and more! Dios - we needed more of her story and what was going through her mind. The police detective - wasn't needed for the story.

Thank you to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a chance to read and review!

This is a novel about women's rage and violence and victimhood captioned as a thriller. It's a crime novel more than a thriller. It wan't for me. I listened to this on audio and read part of it on kindle and my suggestion is that if you want to read this book, pick a print version and not the audio.

3 stars from me. I wanted to love this like so many of the other readers did. It was truly beautiful writing. It's raw and gritty and visceral. It's tough subject matter handled in a brutally honest way. But the writing is deeper than the story. There is a lot of subtext and abstract thinking that I think was supposed to be pulled from this, and I just don't do well with those type of books. My brain is far too simple to want to engage. I will say though, that this had one of the best quotes I've read in a long time that really strikes a chord and others have pointed out in their own reviews: Inside we all rage the same. It's how we let it out that differs. That's some heavy stuff there!! I think many will enjoy this, so I recommend you pick it up!

Sing Her Down tells the story of Florida and Dios, two inmates in an Arizona prison. The story follows them as they navigate the world on the outside and what draws them together. This was the most unique book I have read in a long time and a synopsis really doesn't do it justice.

This book explores the themes of culpability, ownership of consequences, and knowing yourself in a very unique way. The characters of Florida and Dios couldn't have been more different and more the same at the same time. This book was raw and gritty. The prose was lyrical and beautiful. This was the first book that mentioned COVID as part of the narrative that I didn't hate. Ivy Pochoda knows exactly what she is doing and I love it.

An epic modern Western… Cormac McCarthy but with women (I know, McCarthy doesn’t write female characters, which is perhaps why the author wanted to write this book?)

Pochoda has a gift for prose. There was a lot of interesting imagery about apocalyptic and biblical things.

Sing Her Down follows two women who were incarcerated together in Arizona. They’re both released together early, and in the setting of the pandemic one follows the other to Los Angeles for a guns-blazing-style showdown.

You’re told in the first chapter how the book will end, which is always an interesting move but in this case is supposed to add to the inevitability of the story. The first chapter is basically just a copy of the movie Queen and Slim, but then it gets better and more original. I wouldn’t say it’s a fun read, but the writer is obviously very talented.

Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux/MCD on May 23, 2023

Sing Her Down isn’t quite Thelma and Louise, but it echoes the theme of two outlaw women celebrating their freedom from men. The story differs in that the women are not friends. They start the novel in prison, both having chosen an outlaw path before they meet. Like the women in the iconic movie, however, they embark on a crime spree that is more impulsive than planned. They commit crimes they can’t outrun.

Florence Baum is known in prison as Florida. She comes from California money. She was on a lark with her boyfriend when, seeking vengeance against people who ripped them off, he threw a Molotov cocktail that started a fire and killed two people. She drove the getaway car — her Jaguar — and was convicted as an accomplice to murder.

Diana Diosmary Sandoval is known as Dios. She views female empowerment as having the strength to dominate or kill the people who bother you. An inmate named Kace who narrates an occasional chapter calls Dios’ philosophy “fucked up feminist nonsense.” Kace has conversations with dead people so her perspective might not be entirely reliable.

The Arizona prison where they’re serving time decides to grant early releases to suitable inmates to protect them from COVID-19. Florida gets one and promptly violates parole by catching a bus to California. Dios gets an improbable release and joins Florida on the bus. Dios apparently knew where Florida would be staying immediately after her release and followed her. How Dios got out of prison is a mystery, given her history of violent conduct as an inmate.

Florida can’t get away from Dios. They leave the bus at separate times but Dios finds Florida again. For much of the novel, why Dios is pursuing Florida — why Dios is encouraging Florida to commit violent acts — is another mystery. People are sometimes driven to behave in ways that are not easily understood.

Florida is an archetype. She represents those who instigate trouble and refuse to take responsibility for its consequences. Florida blames a boyfriend for beating the father of her friend Ronna. She blames a boyfriend for the murders that sent her to prison. Florida is the kind of person who (both literally and metaphorically) lights the match and blames someone else for starting the fire. America is full of Floridas.

Dios recognizes Florida’s true nature — “always the accomplice and never the perp” —and challenges her to own her violence. Either Dios or Florida killed an inmate named Tina, but they can’t agree about who committed the crime. The reader learns what might be the truth when Tina chats with Kace from beyond the grave.

When Dios exited the bus to resume her search for Florida, she left a body behind. Detective Lobos enters the plot in search of the bus passenger’s murderer. Lobos’ partner can’t believe a woman would cut a larger man’s throat. Lobos believes he undervalues the ability of women to be violent. Lobos muses about all the terms applied to violent women (femme fatales, black widows) that “soften their crimes — to make a sport or light of what they did, to make men able to consider that women can kill.”

Lobos faults herself for not being more violent. She searches for her ex-husband’s face in the faces of the homeless. Even as a cop, she became a domestic violence victim as her husband’s mental health deteriorated. She reviled herself for her weakness. She wants one more chance to stand up to him. She understands how rage can build, how women can kill. She sees the murder on the bus as a statement, “a demonstration of power by someone who wants to be seen.” Perhaps she sees herself that way.

While much of the novel focuses on Florida, Lobos will join the reader in understanding that Dios is more intriguing. While Dios seems to be feral, she doesn’t reveal the fullness of her personality until late in the novel. Sing Her Down is an interesting read because neither Florida nor Dios are exactly the person they initially appear to be.

The plot is atmospheric in both its classic presentation of prison cafeteria fights and its transition to LA noir. Los Angeles in lockdown, the National Guard enforcing a nightly curfew, advances the theme of “a sick city getting sicker.” The unhoused have abandoned their shelters and camps, “creating their own ruins.” Lobos and Florida don’t realize it, but they are connected by the city’s landscape, by the motion they perceive in its murals and its rippling tent cities.

The story ends with a message about the difference between strength and weakness. Violence is not strength. Walking away is not always weakness. Sometimes walking away requires the strength to put the past in the past, to walk in the direction of the future.

The chapters that feature Kace narrating her conversations with dead people are apparently intended to add a cohesive structure to the novel. The novel begins with Kace telling the reader about certain events that will occur in the story, events that might be reflected in a mural. Kace added little of value to the story. Is she really attuned to dead people or is she just crazy? Perhaps the reader is meant to decide that question, but I decided that Kace was annoying. Kace does provide important information that she gleans from Tina’s ghost, but that information could have been conveyed without filtering it through a crazed medium. That’s a relatively small complaint, but the story would have been just as effective without giving Kace a narrative voice.

Kace’s reservations about “feminist nonsense” aside, Ivy Pochoda has something meaningful to say about the choices women make in a world that is too often controlled by violent men. The ending differs from Thelma and Louise, but it’s almost as surprising and similar in its sad inevitability.

RECOMMENDED

WOW, what did I just read? Ivy Pochoda’s new novel, Sing Her Down, is a powerful and somewhat dark read. I fell into this one head first, cringing while turning to the next page...I am not familiar with this author, but definitely will be looking into other books by this one! Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for providing me with an ARC ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Happy Friday!! Coming at you with a review of SING HER DOWN by @ladymissivy. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher @macmillan.audio for the audio-ARC.

Ok this is my second Pochoda reading experience and I am a big fan. She has the ability to portray the lives of women from many different perspectives but is particularly adept at sharing a sneak peek into the lives of characters on the edge of society.

In this story, Florence aka Florida is serving a prison sentence in Arizona. When her sentence is commuted 6 months before it's end date during the pandemic, she thinks this will be her chance to set things right. But in the bus ride to her freedom she realizes another prisoner, Dios was also released at the same time and is on the same bus. Dios, who is the only prisoner that knows her secrets. When Dios catches up with Florida after she tries to escape her off the bus, Florida is dragged into a downward spiral that will leave her reeling, paranoid and in a while lot more trouble than she had planned.

Written in the beginning of the COVID pandemic this book was an edge of your seat gritty thriller that had me looking over my own shoulder. The inner thoughts of the two main characters along with the Detective searching for them revealed grave faults, secrets and vulnerabilities. It felt like Dios was literally and figuratively haunting Florida and weedling her way into her thoughts. I could feel the underlying sense of dread and the sweaty mix of fear and the Arizona sun.

Brilliant writing and another story by Pochoda that has me questioning my own judgements and stereotypes of those around me.

Definitely give this one a try if you like gritty thrillers, character studies and the HEAT! Just came out last month and is on shelves now!

I am headed up to the mountains this weekend to escape the heat a bit after begging for the sun for months. 🤣 How about you?

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#bibliophile #booknerd #bookstagram #thriller #femaleexperience #ivypochoda #singherdown #netgalley #macmillanaudio

Ivy Pochoda is one of the best authors writing now and her characters jump off the page and sit next to you and keep nudging you as you read their story. Unbelievably believable study of women, violence and circumstances. Towards the last third, I began to read slower, only a few pages an hour to keep me in their world. Highly recommended.

I had no expectations going into this other than knowing it was billed as a Killing Eve meets Western situation, and it over-delivered! I thought Florida and Rios were fantastically written, but the real star here is the number of varying female voices we get, owning this story. I felt like we were always headed to a Western-style shootout (and I guess we were), but the how of getting there was just as important and probably more important than the why. This is a very smart book, and the prose is perfectly pitched. I'm not sure I'd call this a Western, but I loved the use of language and setting. My favorite character was the cop (who knew?) but I could definitely see the challenges of being a Florence with a Florida alongside.

"Four stars! I would hand this to someone who likes gritty darkness, or wants to explore why and how women can become killers- I do think Pochoda raises more questions than she answers, but I enjoyed the ride.

I loved this book, but I also have some mixed feelings about the characters and how we're led to feel about them. This story follows Florida and Dios, two women who are released early from an Arizona prison because of overcrowding during the pandemic. Following the state's failure to follow through on it's promises to take care of her during her quarantine, Florida leaves Arizona, breaking her parole. Dios, entranced by Florida and intent on revealing her to be the violent criminal that she knows her to be, follows her. Through a series of violent events, the two draw the attention of an LA cop, Detective Lobos, who begins tracking them.

I loved the prose and the imagery of a pandemic deserted LA. There were so many incredible allusions to classic Western imagery without being campy. I also loved the pointed exploration of violent female rage. I wish we had a little more time with Dios. My main problem with this book is the way the author doesn't really interrogate the way some kinds of female rage and violence, mainly the state sponsored ones, are upheld, whereas others are punished. Likewise, she doesn't really delve into the prison industrial complex and its failings that sparked the "cat and mouse" game at the center of the book.

I still really enjoyed this book, and Ivy Pochoda is clearly a very gifted author, but the above points really gnawed at me. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.