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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Pandemic/Epidemic
Closer to 1.5 stars. I am not generally a thriller fan anyway, so part of this is my fault. However, I thought this was going to be an exploration of the horrors of incarceration, which I am very interested in as someone who is getting their PhD in Criminology.
However, this was just a loose collection of narratives that seemed to be a catalyst solely for Pochoda to express her disgust at unhoused people (except if they give our white main character sage advice of course). The "feminist rage" that appears to be the primary theme of the story is surface level at best and relies on demonizing mental illness and trauma for suspense. Some of the writing sounded like Tumblr poetry, particularly when she is trying to be profound about the consequences of lockdown.
Another thing that bothered me as a person who is getting their PhD in Criminology is the way that Pochoda misleads the audience about crime during the lockdowns in 2020 to provide plot conveniences for her narrative and provide justification for her truly abhorrent treatment of the unhoused population of LA. Here are a few examples.
1. Yes, people were released from some prisons in 2020 because of Covid-19. Dios and Florida certainly wouldn't have been selected due to the crimes in which they were incarcerated and behavior in the prison.
2. I'm not an expert on LA, so perhaps I'm in the wrong here. However, Lobos talks about Skid Row as if it is a defined municipality in LA, which it is not. An officer may refer to an area colloquially in casual conversation but in official police proceedings, Skid Row is not a neighborhood because it does not have definitive boundaries. Pochoda apparently used to teach there according to her author's note, so that makes her dehumanizing discussion of this area all the more disturbing.
3. This is more of a editing mistake than anything else, but at the beginning of the book, one of the character says that the correctional officers do not intervene in fights between the incarcerated women. But then about 20 pages later, Florida wonders why the COs were not intervening in a group of women jumping Dios.
4. Pochoda did not take the time to understand how crime worked during lockdowns. I'm not expecting authors to be experts on all substantive topics, but at least Google what you are talking about. At one point, Lobos says that domestic violence complaints went down during lockdown because home was complicated or some nonsense like that. She phrased this really strangely. If she means that domestic violence went down during lockdown, that is objectively not true. If she means reporting went down, that's also not true. While interpersonal violence (the proper term for it) is vastly underreported and there probably were some situations in which people did not report violence to the police during lockdown that may otherwise have, we know that interpersonal violence increased because people reported it. All of the statistics we have on it are from reports to police and support organizations. It just was a weird thing to get wrong that you can easily Google.
5. She said property crimes increased during lockdown because the rich were fleeing the city. I don't know what kind of Masque of the Red Death situation she thought was going on, and while certainly some mega-rich people left the city, the vast majority of people stayed home. In fact, when looking at the property crime rates in California and Los Angeles (yes, I'm this petty), they were A) already declining once lockdowns started (we were in a crime decline at this period anyway) B) stayed about the same or C) declined. These differ depending on the specific crime you look at. In fact, property crime across California in 2020 was the lowest it had been in sixty years. I pulled this information from local news stations and information from the LAPD.
Overall, a particularly disturbing example of how thrillers dehumanize marginalized people for shock value.
However, this was just a loose collection of narratives that seemed to be a catalyst solely for Pochoda to express her disgust at unhoused people (except if they give our white main character sage advice of course). The "feminist rage" that appears to be the primary theme of the story is surface level at best and relies on demonizing mental illness and trauma for suspense. Some of the writing sounded like Tumblr poetry, particularly when she is trying to be profound about the consequences of lockdown.
Another thing that bothered me as a person who is getting their PhD in Criminology is the way that Pochoda misleads the audience about crime during the lockdowns in 2020 to provide plot conveniences for her narrative and provide justification for her truly abhorrent treatment of the unhoused population of LA. Here are a few examples.
1. Yes, people were released from some prisons in 2020 because of Covid-19. Dios and Florida certainly wouldn't have been selected due to the crimes in which they were incarcerated and behavior in the prison.
2. I'm not an expert on LA, so perhaps I'm in the wrong here. However, Lobos talks about Skid Row as if it is a defined municipality in LA, which it is not. An officer may refer to an area colloquially in casual conversation but in official police proceedings, Skid Row is not a neighborhood because it does not have definitive boundaries. Pochoda apparently used to teach there according to her author's note, so that makes her dehumanizing discussion of this area all the more disturbing.
3. This is more of a editing mistake than anything else, but at the beginning of the book, one of the character says that the correctional officers do not intervene in fights between the incarcerated women. But then about 20 pages later, Florida wonders why the COs were not intervening in a group of women jumping Dios.
4. Pochoda did not take the time to understand how crime worked during lockdowns. I'm not expecting authors to be experts on all substantive topics, but at least Google what you are talking about. At one point, Lobos says that domestic violence complaints went down during lockdown because home was complicated or some nonsense like that. She phrased this really strangely. If she means that domestic violence went down during lockdown, that is objectively not true. If she means reporting went down, that's also not true. While interpersonal violence (the proper term for it) is vastly underreported and there probably were some situations in which people did not report violence to the police during lockdown that may otherwise have, we know that interpersonal violence increased because people reported it. All of the statistics we have on it are from reports to police and support organizations. It just was a weird thing to get wrong that you can easily Google.
5. She said property crimes increased during lockdown because the rich were fleeing the city. I don't know what kind of Masque of the Red Death situation she thought was going on, and while certainly some mega-rich people left the city, the vast majority of people stayed home. In fact, when looking at the property crime rates in California and Los Angeles (yes, I'm this petty), they were A) already declining once lockdowns started (we were in a crime decline at this period anyway) B) stayed about the same or C) declined. These differ depending on the specific crime you look at. In fact, property crime across California in 2020 was the lowest it had been in sixty years. I pulled this information from local news stations and information from the LAPD.
Overall, a particularly disturbing example of how thrillers dehumanize marginalized people for shock value.
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked this but its def not a thriller or a western idk who tf came up with that. I feel like it would be better if it was rearranged a little as well
love the writing, love the vibes, didn’t care about the actual plot
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
dark
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I didn't know I would put this in the category of 'noir' until the end. An incredibly compelling story that explores the different aspects of feminine rage and all the paths (so few, really) that can lead us down.
Told from the viewpoint of two released female convicts and the battered-wife-cop who is chasing them, it's a character study that really asks what can happen in a split second before you make a permanent decision? And who really decides our fate?
Told from the viewpoint of two released female convicts and the battered-wife-cop who is chasing them, it's a character study that really asks what can happen in a split second before you make a permanent decision? And who really decides our fate?
slow-paced
Right off the bat, 5 seconds into listening, I heard something like me trying to do a Larry the Cable Guy impression (aka bad news bears). I just couldn’t do it.