Sing Her Down, by Ivy Pochoda, was NOT an easy book to read, but it's worth sitting with it and digesting it. I've enjoyed Pochoda's work previously and this one did not disappoint.

The story is told from the varying perspectives of four major characters. This can be a bit dizzying at first since you are 'dumped' into someone's brain, basically, but I quickly got used to this form of narrative.

These four characters (and some other, less major personages) are all navigating the world of early COVID lockdown, which provides a stark setting of desolation (both emotional and external). The story takes place in Arizona (in a women's penitentiary) and Los Angeles, California. Pochoda's descriptions of scenery and surroundings is very visual and vivid. I could almost see the 'film' of the story in my head as I was reading.

I'm not sure how to really explain the plot without spoiling it, but it involves crime and violence, self-actualization, some redemption. I would add a big Content Warning for violence (some of it graphic). While it's not egregious it is still very much part of the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher - Farrar, Strous and Giroux - for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. I've already recommended it to my various book groups, and look forward to what Ivy Pochoda writes next!

What a dark read. This book is very dark and violent but I still couldn’t stop reading. This book makes you see that there are those out there with a dark soul.

This book took place in a women’s prison. Three main characters are Kace, Dios, and Florida. Pandemic hit and the prison released a few inmates, Florida wants to get out go back to LA and get her car. Dios wants Floria to her herself by bringing out her dark side, because that’s who she is to Dios. Kace talks to the dead so she knows the secret Florida wants no one to know.

This was a very well written book I enjoyed very much.

I would recommend this book for those that like a dark read.

Thank you NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was a really interesting book for like how everything was tied together. This woman called florida her real name was florence was a bad Girl from wealthy part Los angeles. You find out why her clients were and how she was just left to do what she wanted to do because her mother was not very caring for her.. She ran with really bad people and one of these men actually killed somebody but she got off apparently but she was sent to prison anywhere.. In prison she met a girl named D I r a.. It was a product of new york of the projects who were cen to a very good school with scholarships for she was very angry about things. It was really interesting how everybody played this part in the prison. You'll find out what really happened 21personintheprison. They both got out of prison at the same time but florida really wanted to go to california to get her car and she was stuck in chandler arizona. They made up on the bus going to l a and strange things happen on this bus. The detective who was chasing them had passed with domestic violence against her husband and so she had a lot of issues as well. It was an interesting book because they tied different things together and you can see how people can change or not change. Florida went back to her original home and trying to get a car but that didn't work. Things went really sour when dora showed up and then you realized how crazy the situation got. It also dealt with a lot of issues about sexual and violence in the book. But they made it really interesting. I can see how people can get caught up on the wrong side when there's no discipline for anybody to help them.

Let Me Tell You A Story……

Ivy Pochoda’s new thriller is unusual and focuses on women, women who commit violence. At times, this novel was difficult to read. The author did not refrain from writing about violence in ghastly scenes.

There are three main characters: Florence “Florida” Baum, Diana Disomary “Dios” Sandoval and Detective Lobos. The novel starts out in a women’s prison in Arizona. Pochoda provides a sort of narrator, Kace, who hears voices and interjects her suppositions. The timeframe is during the pandemic and the Arizona Department of Corrections needs to reduce prison populations. Florida is convicted as an accomplice to a murder by driving a getaway car. Dios was convicted for aggravated assault. They both are smart, Florida grew up rich, house with a six car garage in a Los Angeles mansion; Dios was the recipient of a scholarship and she is from Queens. Because of the pandemic, they are initially quarantined for two weeks in a motel. However, they are not brought meals and when Florida leaves to buy food, she keeps going, not returning to the motel. Dios does the same.

They take a bus to Los Angeles; Dios wants Florida to commit violent acts. Downtown Los Angeles is a novel of its own. It is a mixture of rich and poor, multiple languages, violence, and mostly chaos.

The reader is captured in Florida’s mind to relive her troubled past. Dios is tough and shows no mercy. Detective Lobos, Florida and Dios are complex. The novel reaches an interesting crescendo in this “pandemic” novel.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

I featured this title on my Booktube channel. The video can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/oWORAm6N34U

Two women, Dios and Florida, were granted early release from an Arizona prison due to the pandemic with strict quarantine / parole guidelines they are to follow. Will they stick to them or will they risk it to get away? Florida wants to go back to the west coast but Dios keeps her close as she knows what Florida has done.

I like this story because not many books follow the dark side of female characters like Ivy captured !

Thank you netgalley, the author and publisher for my ARC.

Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda is a story about several women with different roles and mindsets revolving around crime and release from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Florence "Florida" Baum is seemlingly an innocent bystander to a crime that landed her in prios. Diosmary "Dios" Sandoval, a fellow inmate, knows differently. Both are released early due to the pandemic and sent to a hotel where they are to stay quaranteed for two weeks. Food is supposed to be delivered daily, but when it goes for much longer, Florida is forced to find alternative solutions, which ulimately leads her to a bus out of town in direct violation of her release. Dios follows her in true stalker fashion and crimes are committed.

Kace is also a fellow inmate but is not released. She is the teller of the story in many of the chapters and is the voice of the dead.

Lobos is a female detective that is chasing Florida and Dios. Ultimately, this is a showdown between Florida and Dios, captured in a mural.

Overall, I enjoyed both the premise and the book. It had an interesting take on the pandemic, which made me think about some of the real-life things we had to endure as a society, and how it must have been for the prison population. I wanted to like the characters, but I wasn't able to connect, which is the main reason I landed on three stars. There were some points in the story that I got confused, and not sure I really felt the ending, but the story line was interesting and different from my usual reads.

Thank you to NetGalley, MCD, and Ivy Pochoda for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Fararr, Straus, Giroux for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book gripped and haunted me from beginning to end.
And I think it's doing it a disservice to conveniently categorize it as some kind of thriller, crime story or even, in a real stretch, a "western".
"Sing Her Down" is most assuredly literary fiction, but written in the immediate, propulsive prose you'd expect in such an action-packed, violent story.......told with brilliant, incisive writing and imaginative, unforgettable imagery.
Yes, in way, it resembles and duplicates the epic, larger-than-life mythic-figure showdowns of Sergio Leone's Italian westerns like "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" and "Once Upon A Time In The West".
The book forces a monumental life evaluation on its three main characters, two women convicts who've violated their parole and the policewoman hunting them - do their darkest impulses come from some pivotal moment in their lives or was the darkness deep within them ingrained, always inside them from birth?
At the height of the 2020 Covid pandemic, Arizona prison cellmates 'Florida' Baum and 'Dios' Sandoval enjoy an early parole, due to the prison's overcrowding. Florida, daughter of a wealthy L.A. family, accumulated a criminal record as a somehow peripheral figure in the crimes she fell into. So Florida's come to think she can find some light at the end of the tunnel, a path to redemption.
But Dios, a hardcore, murderous, unredeemable sociopath, views Florida as a kindred spirit, a sister in darkness who's yet to recognize and embrace the truth of herself. When Florida, hoping to establish a sense of normality, breaks parole and hops a bus back home to L.A., the obsessed, lethal Dios follows her every step of the way. An ultimate showdown between these women becomes inevitable.
And what a perfectly surreal, dystopian backdrop author Ivy Pochada imagines for these women and their final encounter......a mostly abandoned, Pandemic-ridden city whose populace remains fearfully self-quarantined in their homes and whose streets now belong almost exclusively to the homeless.
With murder victims left in their wake, Florida and Dios are being tracked down by Detective Lobos, while she herself must deal with the stalking of her abusive ex-husband. When the paths of these three women finally intersect, it's a climactic confrontation worthy of an Ennio Morricone " Western showdown" symphony.....a hellish dreamscape committed to a wall mural that seems to come alive if given a sideways glance.
"Sing Her Down" struck me as the kind of darkly dreamt book to fully surrender yourself to and lose yourself in........ and even if we're not quite at halfway through 2023, I'd already rate this as one of the best 5 star books I've come across of this year....a TBR list must.

I think that I'm in the minority here, but I did not enjoy this one. It was very disappointing and misleading, and not at all what the synopsis portrayed it to be. I would classify this as more literary fiction than anything else. I do love some good lit fiction, but this book was very hard for me to follow. Most of the time I was confused by the characters' thoughts and lingo. All of the unnecessary metaphors made the writing even more complex for me to interpret. I admit to skimming through many of the pages and almost DNF several times. When you want to put the book down more than you want to read, you know that it just isn't for you. Based on the reviews, many people have loved this book, so I would definitely recommend it. Hoping others will have a more enjoyable reading experience than I did.

Thank you to the author, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for allowing me digital access in exchange for my honest opinion!

A modern day western about the rage and violence of women. A dark and gritty novel, set in the beginning months of Covid, we have two compassionate release inmates and one detective determined to find them. It's a compelling read.

"Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison―or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating.

Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

When an unexpected reprieve gives both women their freedom, Dios's fixation on Florida turns into a dangerous obsession, and a deadly cat-and-mouse chase ensues from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles."

Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Where Pochoda shines here is in the writing; some of it is overtly purple, but she expertly crafts a gritty, sweaty, hot atmosphere that aids the story so well. I also enjoyed some of the conversation surrounding inherent violence or whether or not there's a moment in someone's life that triggers violence. I thought that was interesting, especially in discussion with what it means to be feminine and violent.

The characters were okay. We spend the most time with Florida, so she felt the most developed. Some of her thoughts and actions were a bit repetitive, but isn't that the case with feeling like you're stuck in a loop you can't get out of?

I wish Dios had a lot more characterization. She felt like this shadowy boogeyman, a catalyst for Florida just to act as a catalyst. While this is pretty common in the noir genre, I do wish that there had been more characterization with her.

Kace is probably the most interesting character, acting as a Greek chorus personified.

I really didn't care about Lobos, the detective. With the book being set in 2020 and the conversation of police brutality and protests sort of buzzing in the background, I just didn't care about her thoughts or history. I think she could have been an interesting character, discussing the violence of her job, but...she just felt a little flat and a little like we were ignoring the whole conversation on police brutality.

I do think the book was a bit too long. It felt like a novella length tight concept and storyline that had been packed with extra fluff, most of which was Florida running. It could have been cut by at least 50 pages, and the story probably would have been better off for it.

A mixed bag. The writing and atmosphere were so good, but the characterization and certain plot elements fell a little flat. Obviously Pochoda is a great writer, and I'll continue to check out her work, but this is not my favorite noir/literary western that I've read.

This is a layered gritty story of three women-Florida and Dios who have broken parole to go to Los Angeles, and Detective Lobos who is searching for them. Florida was once Florence but bad behavior bled into assisting an act of violence and a prison sentence that changed her. Dios is a striver who has turned her back on what she was working toward and embraced violence. They're both released early from prison due to COVID and opt to take off for Los Angeles from Chandler Arizona where Florida plans to retrieve "her" Jaguar and Dios just wants to follow her- but someone on their bus murders a prison guard who was also along for the ride and that leads to Lobos, a woman with her own issues. Florida struggles with the homeless who have taken over the streets of LA as well as with herself as she heads for her mother's house. And so does Lobos. No spoilers, Pochoda has a way of writing about tough women, women dealing with darkness and women who are living on the margin. Here she's incorporated the impact of COVID. Kace, who periodically provides a bit of narration, gives insight into both Florida and Dios, who actually remains a bit of a cipher. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm a fan of Pochada's work- this is a terrific read.

Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda is a recommended gritty, violent, dark, feminist Western thriller.

Set during the pandemic, Florence "Florida" Baum and Diosmary "Dios" Sandoval are both inmates at Arizona women's prison. Dios thinks the two are bound by what they are capable of doing. Florida wants nothing to do with Dios. They both receive an early release. When the two go on the run from their two week quarantine, another murder occurs. LAPD officer Lobos is on their trail.

The narrative is divided into two parts and chapters alternate between the point-of-view of Dios, Florida, Kase, another prisoner, and Lobos. Dios is fixated on Florida and wants her to admit that darkness lives in women too. As the two are on the run, they make a plethora of bad choices.

There are sentences and observations included in Sing Her Down that make you want to yell, "Yes! That!" and then there are the over-the-top actions, reactions, violence, and swearing in the novel. I felt myself wildly swinging between loving the writing to cringing over excessive language and violence. These are interesting characters who always seem to be in dramatic situations and in conflict with each other. I appreciate the quality of the writing, but I'm not sure about the characters and the plot. This could be a novel I need to return to in the future.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and Amazon.

This was my first Ivy Pochoda book but definitely not my last! This was a bit different genre for me to read and I really enjoyed it. The characters were fantastic. So many great lessons and thought provoking ideas. Very well done.
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book

2.5 stars
I’m starting to get really upset the current book blurb writing process. It’s misleading to make books sound like they’re one thing when they’re not. I can’t punish the author for the publishing decisions being made outside of their control. So, I’m rounding this up to 3 stars, though my initial instinct was to rate it 2 stars because the blurb did not reflect the tone of the book at all— it most decidedly is *not* a blend of Killing Eve meets No Country for Old Men. Please stop this trend of trying to name popular books or movies/shows that share even the most remote similarities with your newer authors. It’s an unfair game that you’re playing with both authors and readers.
That being said, I don’t know if I’d have read the book if it had been accurately marketed. It’s not a genre/scenario that would jump out for me (post-jail crime spree). I do like to try new/different things though, but the book itself never really came together for me. I did like the narration and it definitely kept me going to the end where I might have just skimmed if I’d been reading.
*Thanks to MCD & NetGalley for the advance reader copy for review.

I found this novel to be pointless and the plot muddled. The characters had no apparent motivations for their actions and simply moved along the story erratically. The whole thing was completely lacking intention and effort.

I've been in love with Ivy Pochoda since Visitation Street and all I can say about Sing Her Down is damn, just damn. I read this in one sitting submerged inside the dark minds of badass criminals, rooting for them in spite of myself. This isn't for the faint of heart in the best way - let's just say I'll never look at spaghetti being twirled on a fork in the same way again.

This was compared to Killing Eve so I knew I had to read it. I enjoyed the first half and was enthralled by prison life. Florida's backstory was interesting and made you understand her behavior. The multiple POVs were unique and had a Greek chorus feel with the one narrator still in prison hearing ghosts. This is definitely a slow burn and at times I felt like nothing had happened in the past few chapters. The narration was great and did make the story very engaging.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not a victim, as she'd have you believe. DiosMary Sandaval is out to prove it. When, due to COVID, Florida and Dios are released from prison early, Dios's obsession turns deadly, Dios chases Florida from Arizona (where they were just released) to the gritty streets of LA, trying to make her see the evil that lays inside.
This was extremely well-written and evokes an entire movie in your mind. However, it just wasn't my cup of tea. These 2 women were terrible and whether it was because of circumstance or their chemical makeup, I just wasn't interested in all their misdeeds.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for this e-arc.*

I had high hopes for this book, but I just did not enjoy it. The chapters are incredibly long, and the story drags on so much that I would forget what happened in the chapter before.