These Women by Ivy Pochoda
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Pochoda does a good job of writing a character-driven novel that touches at the heart of self-worth and struggle. Her novel follows different women as they navigate the tough LA streets full of prostitution, drugs and police avoidance. Also, there is a serial killer that is targeting the prostitutes and slitting their throats. When a 15 year old case comes to Detective Perry’s desk from an unlikely source, she starts investigating the claims to find there is a hidden truth around what’s been happening in LA for over a decade. Detective Perry, a scattered yet intuitive officer, has a unique way of getting to the truth and following frayed ends of a story.
While Pochoda does write a great story that had meaning for many social issues around prostitution, poverty, power and influence…and the simple fact of being believed or heard. I found many of the characters to be a bit boring when looking at their back stories. I really could have done without the Anneke section because she didn’t seem to be a strong, valid point in the story trajectory. She, as a bystander, took up too much time when I would have rather enjoyed more from Roger’s point of view at the end. I also yearned to know more about our other lead, Det. Perry but only those came in fragments that didn’t create a full profile. Why was she so neurotic and fidgety? Why did the killer feel the pull he felt? Why was Dorian so distant from the action after an untimely death of someone she had direct relationship with in the story? It seemed very disjointed and like I couldn’t organically link people and their motivations. This made the story suffer for me at the end when I realized there weren’t enough pages left to fully explain what needed to be explained or tie together the stories in a way that would make me sit back and ruminate for a while. Even while the ending was predictable, I was engaged. While I didn’t love this book, I definitely did not feel like I wasted my time reading it.
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