Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When Jamie, a single mother, runs into Kmart to buy a gift for a child’s birthday party, she somehow, doesn’t think twice about leaving her two girls, Kylie, 10 and Bailey, 8, alone in the car.
She’s frazzled already that morning and doesn’t want them hassling her for treats. Little does she know, in just moments, she will be praying to have those moments again.
Upon returning to the car, she finds it empty. The girls are gone.
Parenting choices aside, this is a devastating circumstance for Jamie. When the police fail to come up with any leads, she begins to unravel (although truth be told, she was halfway there already).
Wanting to help, Jamie’s family hires reputable ‘people finder’, Alice Vega, to perform her own investigation. Vega, a bounty hunter by trade, has had great success locating missing people and Jamie’s family knows, she is their best hope.
Vega is a certified badass with a 6th sense for finding lost things. I loved her from the start. Her character definitely has some skeletons in the closet and that’s my kind of gal. She seems to have no fear and will stop at nothing to track down the ones she seeks.
New to the rural Pennsylvania area, Vega enlists the help of disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. ‘Cap’ resigned from the force in order to protect the reputation of another officer, so yeah, he’s a good guy. Father to a smart, independent 16-year old girl, Cap is getting by doing private investigative work. Begrudgingly at first, he decides to help Vega with the case.
Their investigation was so interesting. The characters detailed so nicely to give this a very seedy feel. It got real dark, which I was not anticipating. This went places.
I loved the chemistry between Vega and Cap. They made a great team and I would love to see more books with them solving cases together. Does anyone know if that is going to be a thing?
I would recommend this to people who like police procedural-type crime thrillers. Especially if you aren’t put off by dark subject matter.
A++ to Book of the Month Club for bringing this book to my attention!