Sing Her Down - Ivy Pochoda - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Ivy Pochoda

NARRATORS: Frankie Corzo, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Sophie Amoss, and Victoria Villarreal

GENRE: Literary Crime Thriller.

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A gritty cat-and-mouse chase thriller focussing on one woman’s obsession with another, the differentiator being that both women are just-released prisoners. A bit too grisly for my taste. But the author *can* write, no doubt!

Story Synopsis:

Florence Baum, known to her prison mates as “Florida”, portrays herself as an innocent prisoner caught as an unlucky bystander. However, her ex cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval aka Dios, is convinced that Florida is lying and not at all innocent.

When both women are released much before their sentence is over due to covid restrictions warranting clearance of space in prisons, Dios is determined to show Florida how similar they both are. This turns into an unhealthy obsession, leading to dangerous repercussions.

The story comes to us mostly in the third person perspective of Florida and Detective Lobos, who is investigating a crime connected with the two women.

Bookish Yays:

🔥 Excellent prose! I’m not that fond of literary flourishes in the thriller genre as they feel quite artificial, but still, I can’t deny that the author is brilliant at stringing words together. I would have highlighted quite a few lines had I been reading the physical or digital version.

🔥 The depiction of the pandemic and its impact on the homeless and the marginalised. Most covid-related fiction so far has focussed on those with means, so this was a welcome and exceptional portrayal. Seeing characters afraid of a cough brought back some guilty yet funny memories.

🔥 The characters, with the possible exception of Dios, are carved quite intricately. They come across as realistic despite their unusual circumstances. Though we see them only in third person, there is still enough to help us understand their nature.

🔥 Wonderful use of the locations to create an atmosphere of nail-biting tension. Beginning in Arizona and ending in Los Angeles, the writing captures the raw side of both the places.

🔥 The narration comes to us from multiple third-person points of view. Florida’s is the most impactful track, as her backstory and her current insecurities come out clearly.

🔥 Another good track is that of Kase, a fellow prisoner who acts as a sort of Greek chorus, providing us with information to fill in the blanks left by Florida’s track. Her voice is muddling and clarifying at the same time.

Bookish Nays:

💢 Though Dios is a key element of the plot, she barely gets any direct role in the narrative. The book would have worked better for me if I had got a direct glimpse of the machinations of her devious mind.

💢 While I did like Detective Lobos’s track as it offered plenty of elements to ponder upon, I didn’t understand why she needed to be given a voice in what was essentially a Florida-Dios story. It took away from the core plot.

💢 This is a woman-oriented plot all the way. And the strong women characters carry the story well enough. As such, there are limited male characters but even then, all of them are portrayed as stereotypical jerks. This becomes monotonous. Even feminist fiction can have a couple of good male characters.

💢 Dios’ obsession with Florida didn’t feel convincing to me. This lack of connect is heightened as we don’t get to hear from Dios. So the entire cat-and-mouse pursuit felt baseless.

💢 Put this one down to personal preferences, but the level of violent and gruesome scenes was way beyond my comfort level. I just hated some of the grisly descriptions.

The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 8 hrs 33 min, is narrated by four narrators: Frankie Corzo, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Sophie Amoss, and Victoria Villarreal. All the narrators are excellent, and do their best to flesh out their characters with emotions. There was just one minor issues. Dios’s dialogues come to us from the third person perspectives of Florida and Kase, and there are a couple of chapters with the first person voice of Dios herself. However, the emotional tone and voice pitch of the narrator in the first person pov were absolutely different from the two narrators voicing Dios in the third person. The former sounded quite delicately feminine while the latter two made her sound rough and tough. This was a jarring difference. Nevertheless, the audiobook is still a good way of trying out this book.

Do note that there are plenty of cuss words in the plot. While these might be justified as acceptable lingo for prisoners, they still make the audiobook a test of your patience as the f-bombs keep exploding in your ear.

All in all, this story made me read from start to end despite my misgivings. However, though I wanted to know what happened to the characters, I wasn’t emotionally invested in any of them, and this disconnect created a hurdle I couldn’t surpass.

That said, I am impressed by the writing prowess of this author, and will keep an eye out for her future works.

Recommended to those who would enjoy chase stories with feisty characters and don’t mind brutal scenes. I don’t think this qualifies as a Western thriller as marketed, despite a street fight and gritty characters. It’s more of literary crime drama.

My thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the ALC of “Sing Her Down”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.