Omg I loved this. I was so intrigued by each of the women's story and social commentary was pretty fitting. I think it was so easy to see fragments of myself in each of these women, heartbroken, at times a victim of circumstance (obviously not anywhere the same degree), a voice talked over a story overlooked. A review I read previously had said all these women would stay with me... and they have.

Thank you to NetGalley and F&F for this ARC

Brilliant book and great concept. Character development was very well done.

A thriller like no other, Ivy Pochoda's These Women blazes new ground in an oft-tired genre and brings to light the stories of victims who are all too often pushed aside and overlooked.

This was gripping. The different perspectives and how the stories flowed and combined together was so interesting, I found myself able to see the setting and really sense the mood of the novel. There are big societal issues at play within the book, and the topics are relevant as always. Loved this, will definitely look into more books by Ivy Pochada!

This has been on my TBR list for ages because I’d heard so many people raving about it. I was delighted to be approved for a copy on NetGalley but haven’t gotten around to reading it until now. I was blown away by These Women, it’s exactly as fantastic as I expected it to be, one of the few times when the hype is spot on. I read a lot of thriller’s and this offers a unique POV, focusing on the murder’s potential victims rather than the killer or police. This is a powerful, impressive book that deals with fear created in a neighbourhood by the threat of violence, but also how society often view women and their bodies in a negative way and women generally not being listened to. This is an evocative read.

This is a truly special book, it deserves a lot of hype. I really enjoyed this and found the unique perspective- the women in a neighbourhood targeted by a serial killer, rather than the serial killer themselves, really interesting.

This is one of the most unique thrillers of the year, giving a new spin to the traditional serial killer narrative. The novel follows women who live and work in the neighbourhood that the killer is targeting, instead of focusing on the male killer and his motives. The destruction and fear that is rained down upon the neighbourhood by the killer is transmitted skilfully by the author through a cast of diverse characters. As a reader you are made to consider issues surrounding sex work, gentrification, art and race. This is a novel that has a lot more to say than simply, “whodunnit?”

I'll be honest, I was mainly drawn in by the hypnotic cover of These Women and was also after something gritty and pacy to get through quickly. These Women absolutely delivered on this for me. If you're after a pure mystery thriller then These Women may not be quite what you're after. There is a mystery at the heart of the story but that isn't really the focus. When the killer is revealed, it's almost inconsequential as we're far more invested in the 'these women' alluded to in the novel's title. We read from the perspective of a handful of different women each with a different piece of the puzzle each trying to survive in a world filled with violence.
There is a lot covered in this book - the way society views women's bodies, how the police utilise resources and the dichotomy between women as sex objects and women as daughters/mothers/wives. I especially picked up on the theme of women not being listened to. Each of the women in this novel is ignored for one reason or another and, had they been listened to, their lives and the lives of other women could have been so different. The theme of ignoring women speaks to a tendency in our society to dismiss female fear as an overreaction particularly from women who we deem as throwaway whether they be prostitutes, older women or just those who use their femininity to access the wealth and resources they would otherwise have been denied.
If you're looking for a mystery thriller which gives you in-depth character analysis, social commentary and a book where women are the subject and not just the object then These Women is for you. I had never heard of Ivy Pochoda before reading this book but will definitely check out her backlist after enjoying this story so much.

The focus of this novel is not really the murders, it's more the crimes committed against the characters by those who we are supposed to expect better from.

The title plays as both the recognition of the women who populate its pages and also the dismissive 'these women' that people throw the way of women involved in sex work or sex adjacent work.

The point of view changes are effective and the building block effect of each new voice is solid. They are more than the sum of their parts.

However, while the prose is solid it was a bit too obvious to me where we were going too early, and the justification for why was not quite solid enough for me.

I wanted to be a bit more rattled to my core.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

A dark crime novel which centres on the murders of sex workers in LA. Some interesting twists and turns, and it was a unique and gritty story compared to many traditional crime novels I’ve read.

I received a free copy of the book from Netgalley.

Thanks to Faber and Faber Ltd and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Although ''These Women' is billed as a thriller, it seems a bit disingenuous to bracket it in such narrow terms. It is more than a thriller and no less than a literary tour de force; a subtle, yet incisive exploration of the complex configurations of violence against women. Indeed, amongst the feminist drive for equality between the sexes, the ever-present fear of violence women face from men has remained a constant. It would be an easy recourse to examine this phenomena through a binary analysis of cliched gender stereotypes of women as victims, men as predators, but Pochoda eschews such a simplistic and wholly unrealistic approach. She writes instead of a rich texture of womanhood, of a femininity that is unrestrained in its vitality, despite its vulnerabilities. This spectre is somewhat unexpected in a book about the fear and experiences of violence of 'these women' in contemporary Los Angeles, but contrary to expectations, the hint of a glimmer of female empowerment punctuates the narrative with great poignancy and an understated force by the author. This is most evident in what is absent in the narrative, namely, the serial killer that binds these women's experiences of violence in the narrative. By confining the face of the monster to the wings of the stage upon which events unfold, Pochoda gives voice to a female victimhood that is broken not beaten, diminished but not destroyed. Raw, profound and utterly compelling.

I loved Ivy Pochoda's second novel, Visitation Street, which I thought was so good on place and gentrification, following a group of disparate characters through the streets, bodegas and ruins of New York's Red Hook neighbourhood. Unfortunately, These Women fell short for me. Told from six different female perspectives, it's billed as a book about a serial killer from the point of view of his victims, but more than halfway through, this thread was still barely visible. This wouldn't have mattered if the individual characters had been stronger, but I found them stereotypical - the sex worker, the run-down owner of a run-down cafe, the jaded vice cop. The LA setting is also not brought to life in the same way that Red Hook was in the previous novel. Pochoda's writing is usually fresh and distinctive, but this all felt too familiar - the 'female side of the story' angle has been done so many times that I'm now looking for more in a novel than just that. DNF @ 54%.

I'd loved Visitation Street, the only other novel by Ivy Pochoda I'd read, and I was by no means disappointed by this new book. These Women is as much of a brilliant exploration of a city, Los Angeles in this case. It is once again splendid American noir, in which the whodunnit plot is almost like a secondary character, a simple background for what is truly in the foreground: the in-depth social examination of an urban landscape, as well as a fascinating introspective exploration of the mind, and more specifically of women's minds. The writing is precise and the voices of awe-inspiring authenticity. It is a novel about justice and the lack of it, and about the consequences of being denied what in an ideal world should be a birthright for each and every one of us, including 'these women'.

Thank you to Netgalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for the arc of this book,

In the year 1999, In South Central Los Angeles in the Western Adams, 13 women are murdered and Most of the victims are actually what you call sex workers. There is never ever an arrest because the police never actually tried too as maybe they see it as an ‘occupational hazard or something then in the year 2014 murders start to happen again..... . The story focuses on ‘these women’ and tells the story from their undervalued point of view.

3 stars
it was a good read but not really my type of read but an interesting one

Western Avenue, Los Angeles is a major artery that bisects the 10 Freeway and runs a north-south route through the city. Either side of the freeway and adjacent to Western Avenue lies the area of West Adams. It’s an area with many historic buildings, but these days is densely populated and houses a high percentage of African American and Latino residents. It’s here that we meet a number of women, some of them prostitutes and many women of colour. Some of these women are to meet a grisly end at the hands of a killer who slashes their throat and affixes a bag over their head. But how is justice to be served when the families of the deceased seem powerless to motivate a police force who are apathetic to their plight.

We first meet Feelia who has survived an attack, despite receiving a serious knife wound to her neck. It’s pretty clear that Feelia doesn’t have the ear of the local police who she visits regularly over the next fifteen years, solely now to complain that’s she’s being stalked. Needless to say, her attacker was never traced. Next we are introduced to Dorian who supplies free food to some street prostitutes who visit her fish shack. Dorian’s daughter, Lecia, was a non-surviving victim of a similar attack to that suffered by Feelia, again some fifteen years ago. Lecia had been babysitting Julianna, now a sassy young woman who dances at a wretched local club and also offers other services to clients. The fifth woman is Kathy, one of the prostitutes who regularly drops by Dorian’s place for a free meal. Kathy works the streets. Then there is Marella, Julianna’s next door neighbour and an aspiring artist.

The interactions between these women are sometimes raw and often funny. The dialogue is spiky and peppered with street slang and I quickly became captivated by these people and fascinated by descriptions of the places they frequent. It’s gritty, sometimes shocking and often sad but never dull. But now the violent deaths have returned to this place - it seems that a killer is on the prowl again. The modus operandi appear to be identical to the earlier attacks, leading friends and families of the victims to conclude that this is the work of the same killer. Can they persuade a reluctant police force to accept that a serial killer is on the loose? Perhaps there is one hope: Essie Perry has had her own share of grief in her life but as she rides her patch on a bicycle this discredited Vice cop begins to recognise that a pattern is forming.

The author has written a compelling tale set in an place she seems very familiar with – as she should, she lives there herself. Not only that, many of the settings here are heavily influenced by real life establishments and neighbourhoods. Consequently, it all does feel very real. The overall construction of the piece, the dialogue and the descriptions of life in this place are all top notch. I’m struggling to find a criticism, I absolutely loved it!

Ivy Pochoda has a wonderfully distinctive writing style and tone. "These Women" explores grief, loss and violence against women. Through their eyes, we see the impact of a society which considers some lives more valuable than others. How easily women are dismissed, and sex workers left at the bottom of the scrap heap. It's sad, sassy and doesn't pull any punches. Orphelia Jefferies is a brilliant character. I adored her, with her fabulously strident voice. Loved the book and devoured it in a day.

I struggled to get into this at first, with the feeling that it was pointlessly “gritty” and trying too hard, but once the way that the various characters, all affected by a serial killer, started to click together for me I began to enjoy it. I worked out who the killer was a little before it was revealed but it was still an enjoyable read. I particularly liked that this was about the victims and women affected by the serial killer, rather than focusing any real attention on him or his motives.

These women is a gritty, dark story following 5 different women as they each have their brushes with a serial killer. Some have been experiencing the inner terror for years, some are finding it for the first time. The author expertly lays out the 5 women in a way that I haven’t seen executed as well from others. She also highlights the lack of care and interest is taken when it is a sex worker who is murdered, which highlights our worlds horrible way of putting some lives above others.

I did struggle at first getting into the style, but that is a personal preference thing, and once I was in, I was in and I loved it!!

One of the things I loved about this was that even though it centred around a male killer, the book didn’t actually FOCUS on him, it was told through women and their stories which was refreshing to read. Pochoda’s ability to really explain these women’s lives and get under the skin of them al makes you feel like a fly on the wall in each individual life being that of an anguished mother or a sex worker, she really hits the nail on the head with this book and it is a truly original take on a serial killer story.

Written from the perspective of the women impacted by the serial killer, this book shows the story through the eyes of a grieving mother, a cop, a survivor and a victim. It is a gritty and compelling read that I would highly recommend.

These Women is a literary thriller that tells the story of serial killer through the eyes of women affected by the killer's actions. In the late 90s, sex workers were brutally murdered in L.A., and then suddenly they stopped. The police didn't seem to care and the murders remained unsolved. Years later, a few new murders start to raise questions about whether they're linked to each other, and to these previous cases. From the mother whose daughter was killed in the original spree to the cop working Vice and trying to actually listen to what could be the only survivor, six women unfold the narrative and the story of forgotten, ignored women.

The novel is split into five sections, with a final sixth narrator appearing throughout, and this structure works better than in some attempts to do this, feeling mostly like the cuts between narrators are purposeful and suit the flow of the narrative. It also worked well to foreground different voices and characters, though the final narrator was so hard to engage with the mindset of that it did make the end a bit frustrating (which I don't want to explain due to spoilers). The novel was quite hard to get into at first, feeling disjointed and a bit confusing, but after a while it was easier to get gripped by the stories of these different women, and the unfolding mystery.

The focus on who is listened to and believed made this a distinctive take on a literary serial killer story. It invites the reader to see into the lives of a range of women, though it perhaps needed to look a bit more into the lives of the sex workers and some of the prejudices other characters held about them more consistently throughout the narrative.