“Two Girls Down” by Louisa Luna
She’ll only be a minute. That’s what Jamie Brandt thought when she carelessly left her two girls in the car while dashing into K-Mart to buy a birthday gift. An action that she later regretted when she returned to her car a few minutes later to find her girls missing.
I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by this book! When I began, I thought, OK, another deadbeat parent who pays absolutely no attention to her children and whines when something bad happens to them.
In the first few pages of the book, Jamie Brandt declares she “was not a bad mother”. Really? Curse words, alcohol and drugs just to make it through a short drive and kid’s birthday party? I hated her from the first few pages of the book.
Cue Alice Vega. She is called in by Jamie’s wealthy and much more high class Aunt to find the girls as her specialty is locating missing children. Alice enlists the aid of Max Caplan, a local disgraced policeman turned private investigator.
The book details their attempts to find the girls and those responsible. I don’t want to give anything away, but it was fantastic! I could not put it down. The twists and turns to get to the end were great and the reasoning behind the disappearance was a unique twist.
My only issue with the book was that the author mentioned three security guards at K-Mart. I have never known a K-Mart to have three security guards on duty at one time!
In the end, I cut Jamie some slack. Mother of the year? No. But she is a single mother and does love her girls. After all, sometimes even I dream of putting another beverage in my travel mug to get through another birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese!
According to the notes at the end of the book, this is the author’s first foray into adult literature. She has written a couple of YA books. However, Goodreads lists another first published in 2004. This one was good enough that I plan to read her others!
Publication Date: January 9, 2018
Genre: Thriller, suspense, mystery, crime, detective
Cover: OK
Rating: 4.5 stars (rounded to 5)
Source: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this great book!

Product Details

This was surprisingly good for genre fiction.



Review copy provided by publisher.

Need a page-turner of a mystery for your next vacation read? Here it is. At first, the plot line might seem a bit ordinary: young mom, whose life choices are not always wise, parks her car at K-Mart to grab a birthday party present, leaves her two young daughters in the car, and yes, upon returning, the girls have vanished. However, thanks to the two main characters, this is not your ordinary thriller. Alice Vega, a bounty hunter and all-around bad-ass, is hired by the wealthy aunt to find the two girls. Vega has a golden reputation, made famous by media attention, in bringing home missing kids. Once she arrives in the small Pennsylvania town, Vega needs a partner and a way in to the police department information. Enter Max Caplan (aka Cap), a former policeman who resigned in disgrace, a single father of a unique teenager, and a private detective currently involved in spying on cheating spouses. Cap sees Vega's wily tricks that get her through impossible situationsand understands the demons that drives her; Vega sees the heart of gold under Cap's gruff exterior and his keen instinct for bad guys. It is an entertaining race with these two to find these girls as they meet some unique characters both inside and outside the law.

A small town in Pennsylvania, a town considered safe, a mother makes a mistake with horrific results.A single mom in a hurry, she leaves her you get daughter's in her vehicle and runs into Walmart to grab a last minute birthday gift. When she returns to her vehicle, she experiences a parents worst nightmare. Her girls are gone.

The grandmother hires Alice Vega, a bounty Hunter who specializes in finding missing children. When she gets into town she hires Cap, an ex policeman who has a storied past with the department. I enjoyed both these characters, Vega is a take no holds, follow no rules kind of woman. Her only goal is to find these two young girls, preferable alive. She is a match for any man, tough, trained and deadly. Cap, divorced, finds her intriguing, and he is equally committed to their goal. They compliment each other wonderfully. Cap, the more tender of the two, not that he isn't her match in toughness, but because his teenage daughter Nell, keeps him grounded. She is an amazing in young woman, with a sharp insight of her own. The relationship between Nell and Cap is warm and so endearing.

I'm expecting great things from this series which is off to a prodigious start. It is perfectly balanced, between personal and case, which I admit has been difficult to find in my recent reading. The characters are fully fleshed, intriguing and I look forward to what I hopefully expect will be their further partnership.

ARC from Netgalley and Doubleday.

Two Girls down by Louisa Luna is a fast paced mystery driven by great characters.
In a small Pennsylvania town, two girls Kailey and Bailey gets kidnapped. Their mother’s family hires the bounty hunter Alice Vega to find the missing girls.
Alice Vega has a great track record in finding missing people. It’s her specialty.
“So you find missing people, that right? How many people have you found so far? “
“Eighteen”
“How many times have you been hired is the real question?”
“Eighteen”
When Vega lands in Pennsylvania, She is immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic. So she requests the help of a disgraced former cop Max Caplan and the odd duo team up together to bring the girls home.
This book is the perfect blend between action and building up the mystery. The first half of the book is full of action, binge worthy and impossible to put down. Then it slows down, giving away to the mystery part of it.
Alice Vega is a no nonsense character. She acts first and thinks later. Oh man! The scene at the construction site, That did make an impression (She reminded me of Jack Reacher). As a former cop, Cap is great at interrogation and he makes up for Vega’s quirky behavior. Alice and Cap make a commanding pair and they do have chemistry. To me, Cap did not make a great impression at first but as I learnt more about his past and his relationship with his teenage daughter Nell, I ended up liking him. Vega’s character is still a mystery and a bit incomplete. We see bits and pieces about her past but I am pretty sure there is more to it. I am looking forward to read more of her (If this becomes a series!!)
Thanks to Double day books and netgalley for ARC.
To put it all together, Two girls down is a compelling thriller that won’t disappoint. 4/5 Stars.

Thx to Netgalley, Doubleday Publishers, and Louisa Luna for this ARC. I love when I find a new author that can take what could be just another mystery/thriller and put a new spin on it. This one did just that. Alice Vega is a protagonistic female heroine and Cap is a disgraced former police officer who team up to find 2 missing girls.. There are multiple characters that you need to actually think about and multiple storylines which will keep you guessing. I loved this book and hope this author continues on with these characters . It would make a great series.

The book itself drew me in because I enjoy suspense and was excited that Book of the Month had chosen it as a January box pick. I couldn't put this book down because I wanted to know if both girls were going to make it. Vega was a very unique and strong character that brought a lot of the action to the story. The plot was built in a manner where there various layers to the story, it wasn't a typical story because you kept learning new things as the story went on. Thank you Netgalley & Doubleday for this e-copy.

Jamie wondered how the girls could care so much about what other people think. Kylie is ten years old and Bailey is eight. Jamie wishes for a simpler time with her two girls. The girls now always seemed to need or want something. All Jamie wanted was a few seconds of peace. They are on their way to a birthday party and are detoured to a different way by a cop. They stop at a strip mall and Jamie goes in for a present leaving the car idling and the girls in it.Jamie comes out of the store about ten minutes later and the car is there but the girls are gone. Later after looking at a tape after Jamie had went into the store the girls were seen going into a ice cream shop and sampling all the samples. The cops are stretched thin because of budget cuts and a drug epidemic and don’t really help Jamie to find her girls. Jamie’s aunt hires Linda Vega who is a bounty hunter with a good record of finding missing persons. Linda has the assistance of a of a computer hacker called “ The Bastard” who begins to dig up information. The cops won’t help Alice so she goes to Max “Cap” Calan - a former police detective who took the fall for a young cop with a wife and two kids. So Cap resigned and is now trying to move on with his life and is a P I. Cap’s sixteen year old daughter convinces him to work with Alice. Alice and Cap are making some process finding the girls. They have to decide which leads are false and which leads have potential to gain information from. Max and Alice are very opposite.
This was a great book with some dark parts in it. I didn’t want to put this down and it kept my attention from beginning to end. I loved the plot and the fast pace. This was a well written book that was both suspenseful and had a lot of action in it. There was also a lot of tension. I would have liked more backstory for Alice and Cao . This book has a realistic feeling to it. I loved how Cap was a and listened to his sixteen year old daughter . Reading this book was like being on a roller coaster ride. I will say I did hope for more from the end but I still felt this deserved a five rating. I love the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I highly recommend.

Excellent book, really gripping mystery combined with an awesome female character and a great male (work) partner. This reads like the start of a series, which I would welcome as Vega and Caplan make a great team. This book reminded me a bit of the Dennis Lehane Kenzie and Gennaro series, which is a huge compliment. Highly recommend and look forward to more from this author.

I really enjoyed the spunk of Vega, and her strong personality, and overall get it done attitude. Cap is trying to find his way back after being let go from the police force after taking the fall for a friend. He is a little more by the book but also really smart. I liked the two paired together and would love to see this as a series.

There were at least two sections of the book that I found to be really offensive in terms of derogatory language toward two different groups, which prevents me from giving it 5 stars.

Alice and Max were a great team. I loved watching the two of them play off each other, starting with suspicion and disdain and ending with teamwork and triumph. The missing girls plot was thinner than I would have preferred. Although I was interested the entire time, this story did not quite reach the level of "page-turner."

By the 1% point on my kindle, the author had already saturated the book with the f word, cursing involving God, ( I really hate that! I find it very offensive. ) and sex. It continues along that vein from beginning to end. Of course, the police and private investigators use lots of profanity, because this is the stereotypical way they speak in all recent books I have read. In this book, even a few of the children use some profanity. After a while, it really got to be overdone.

The mother of the missing girls, Jamie, is vulgar and proud of it. She thinks her daughters will remember her as cool when they get older because she used the f word in front of cops. She is also proud of her older daughter because she is a flirt and is picking up her bad habits. This daughter is ten. Basically, I didn’t find Jamie to be a likeable character.

I did sympathized with Cap, the ex-cop who resigned from the police force so a friend wouldn’t lose his job; he seemed like a decent guy who ended up stuck doing work he wasn’t happy doing. On the minus side, since he is an as an ex-cop he also has to do his share of cursing: stereotyping again. Cap’s daughter, Nell, was a shining light in this book. Nell was a good daughter. She was very intuitive about people and the reasons they behaved the way they did; she chose to make good decisions. There was a big difference in the parenting styles between Cap and Jamie; it showed in the way the children behaved.

The female Private investigator, Vega, used forceful tactics that probably should have ended up with her in jail; she enjoyed getting into physical altercations a bit too much and at times her behavior was way over the top. The author did a slow reveal of Vega’s earlier years, but it wasn’t enough for me to really feel sorry for her or like her.

While the mystery was well played out with twists and turns, I didn’t care for the non-stop bad language. There were also a lot of characters I did not like. I’m giving this book a 2. On Goodreads that means it was ok; a fair score for this book.

Most avid readers have our irresistible elements and tropes (for me: hate to love books, tough-girl-with-a-soft-center stories, coming of age themes, road trip books and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting.) Then I think most of us also have a mental list of those kinds of stories that we just don't want to touch.

Books about bad things happening to children and animals are at the top of my No Thanks list.

So. What made me try Two Girls Down when the blurb started out: when two young sisters disappear??  idk ... but it was probably the phrase "enigmatic bounty hunter Alice Vega." I'm a sucker for a tough-girl thriller heroine.

My takeaway: always trust your instincts, in reading and in general.

Yes, the book did involve stuff that made me really uncomfortable. But I also thought that Two Girls Down was a really, really strong book. One of the best in the suspense/mystery/thriller genre that I've read in a while. (tbh I read thrillers non-stop in the 90s and only have been getting back into them recently...)

What did I love about Two Girls Down?

--Alice Vega was just as great as promised. She's like a female Jack Reacher - a no-nonsense former army recruit who now works efficiently and tirelessly to find missing people. She's a woman of few words and a lot of action.

--Max "Cap" Caplan was just as awesome. Yes, the whole disgraced/disgruntled former cop is a big trope, but I loved Cap, his relationship with his teenage daughter Nell, and the very tentative and quietly sizzling partnership he develops with Alice.

--The writing was really top-notch. Apparently Louise Luna wrote a couple of YA's back in the 00's. Nothing on my radar ... though I wasn't blogging back then. But she can really write. I always hope for competent writing in a thriller, but Two Girls Down had some moments that made me close the book for a moment and pause, either because something was so sharply observed or just hit me hard emotionally.

--The plotting was great too. I loved the fact that Two Girls Down did lay out all the clues that I needed to figure things out .... and that I did not figure anything out at all. This one really kept me guessing ... and on the edge of my seat.

--When I thought about it, Two Girls Down was a LOT about different types of parent/child relationships. And the fact that once you're a parent, you pretty much do the best you can and then worry non-stop. 

--My hiatus from thrillers got me thinking a lot about what kind of stories and images I want in my head space. Also the fact that I don't love that a lot of thrillers (and thriller-y movies) can glorify and objectify violence in a way that desensitizes us to its repercussions. I appreciated the fact that while Two Girls Down dealt with some really unpleasant and horrifying subjects, it never shied away from the very real suffering that violence and crime can cause. Two Girls Down was a disturbing book, but also a incredibly empathetic one. Ultimately, that's what kept me reading.

I definitely recommend this one if you're a fan of suspenseful thrillers and police procedurals.

This story resonated on so many levels. First of all, Alice Vega, prickly and socially inept, felt like a real life person I might know, someone that I might not like initially but that would probably grow to like over time. Second was the story of unraveling the girls' disappearance. You can't help but wonder about the randomness of real life incidents like this. How often is it a series of happenings that intersect at just the wrong time? This is a book that you will enjoy, but it will also make you think after you have flipped the last page. I want to see more of Vega and Cap. And Nell!

*ARC via netgalley*

Two Girls Down is a great book. It’s a thrill ride of epic proportions. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. It’s chock full of one liners and one bad ass female bounty hunter/private investigator named Alice Vega from California. Alice is hired to go to Denville, Pennsylvania to locate two young sisters who went missing from a mall parking lot. Alice does her job with precision and doesn’t let anyone or anything get in her way. She also enlists the help of former cop turned private investigator Max Caplan who has his own dragons to slay considering that he left his police career in disgrace.

There was no shortage of suspects concerning the girls’ disappearance. The police are clueless. Alice has resources that are uncanny. She has a hacker named The Bastard who can get her all kinds of information. Max’s role ends up being the anchor since he was able to stop her from being completely unhinged. In her own words, Alice is “The Motherf*cker Who Gets Sh*t Done.” She is relentless and bows down to no one. Even when she gets hit in the face with a wooden board, she just shakes it off. In another instance, she subdues several guys with items she picked up from a hardware store. She is clearly the Black Widow. It’s hard to believe that she only went through basic training in the Army. I could go on and on about her attitude and sheer confidence but you’ll just have to read it for yourself. Two Girls Down was amazing. The story and the characters are well written. I can’t give much detail because it’s a mystery at its core. There is never a dull moment and you will never figure out who done what until the big reveal.

I hope that Alice’s story doesn’t end here. She has a lot of depth and I can see a bright future in sequels for her.

Sorry I don't think I requested this, perhaps I received a widget? At any point this doesn't really sound like my thing but thank This is a very well done, page turning, high tension mystery/thriller. I was engaged from the very first page and read it in two sittings. Ms. Luna’s writing is smooth flowing and her characters are very well described, in particular the two main characters in the book. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was that in parts the back stories on Alice Vega, the private investigator and the ex-policeman that she engages, “Cap” Max Caplan, get a little wordy. At some points I just wanted the story to move forward without the extensive internal dialogue about what these characters traumatic histories were.
As the blurb explains, Jaime Brandt, a young mother, leaves her two daughters, ages eight and ten, Bailey and Kylie in the car while she runs into the store to pick up a birthday gift for a party her daughter is about to attend. When she returns to the car, both of the girls are gone. After frantically searching the stores in the mall and the parking lot, she enlists the help of the police.
The police force is extremely short handed and overworked. They work the case but things don’t seem to be moving along quickly enough. Jaime’s parents hire a private investigator, Alice Vega, known for finding missing children to help with the case. Alice in turn hires an ex policeman, Max Caplan to help her since he knows the workings of the local police form having retired from the force a few years previously under somewhat dubious circumstances.
Alice and Max make a great pair. Alice has her own “techy” whom she enlists whenever she is digging for information on any of the families or others that may have known the girls. He provides lots of information about location, history, etc a lot more quickly than the police do. This of course leads to some “locking of the horns” between the local police and the PI’s. Eventually the search gets so frantic that the FBI is called in and it’s seen to be imperative that they share information.
The story is a good one, although horrifying as a parent and grandparent to read. The psychopath and equally disturbed partner have committed some unspeakable crimes and I was only able to breathe easily again after they were caught, it felt that intense to me at some points.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a fast paced, character driven thriller. I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley, thank you.
you for the opportunity.

I always say the mark of a good thriller is when I can't tell you much in the review, and this book fits the bill. It's about two girls who go missing and two private investigators work together to figure out who kidnapped them. The pace was great, and I really liked both of the main characters. The big reveal was well done, too.

Thrillers will never go out of style in literature. Missing children will never go out of style as a plot in books. And the combination of a gruff, slightly older guy who is weary of the world pairing off with a tough, younger woman who wants to fight the world will never go out of style as compelling main characters.

Louisa Luna checked all three of those boxes with TWO GIRLS DOWN.

Luna starts the story with a mother stating that she is not a bad mother. Whether she’s telling the world, telling herself, or telling some combination of both, it is what she says. And then she cops to smoking pot and having too many boyfriends. All this sets the stage for a story of abducted children and a small town’s dirty little secrets.

The world-weary guy is Cap… I honestly forget his first name (Mike, maybe?) because he is only ever called Cap or Caplan in the book… who is an ex-cop turned PI who took the fall for a friend who had more to lose when something went wrong.

The fight-the-world woman is Vega… I remember her name is Alice because she sometimes think of herself that way, as everyone else calls her Vega… who has achieved celebrity-like status as the finder of missing children.

(I sense a series of books coming focused on the combined efforts of Cap and Vega, and a possibly romance between them… I am 100% on board with this. Just saying.)

The town where Bailey and Kylie Brandt go missing is a place called Denville in eastern Pennsylvania. Opioid addictions run rampant and the town is struggling to keep afloat, as many small towns are. This sets the stage for many dodgy suspects and a general air of suspicion against everyone from dealers to cops. There’s even a missing, handicapped adult who seems to be either a suspect or maybe taken by the same people, and his mother is dying of cancer.

(This is in no small part thanks to the pollution spewed by the coal mines in the area. I really didn’t expect there to be so many social statements in this sort of a novel but I like it. There really isn’t any better way to open someone’s eyes than to put it in a story.)

A small flaw in the story are the abundance of small-town cliches and cop-related tropes. It’s almost… too perfectly screwed up, if that makes sense. The gritty and harsh setting fits the story Luna is telling but can that many bad things really happen in that tiny section of a world? Maybe. I suppose.

Cap and Vega don’t seem like they’d work well together at all. He’s quiet and deliberative while she’s loud and reactionary (she may endear herself to him in a scene involving hot tea and a deadbeat husband’s genitals). But they get they job the job done despite the secrets she keeps and the life he has with his teenage daughter. Vega does spend a lot of time flashing back to her life in California and the cases she’s worked, and that comes off kind of disjointed and almost randomly attached to her, but it’s kind of part of her quirky nature.

In a sense, TWO GIRLS DOWN reads like a weekly crime drama. Not a case-of-the-week show like Law & Order but something that lasts a season. The characters are drawn into a vivid scene and everyone has their carefully crafted role to play. The way things turn out is entirely satisfying and it made sense and I am so glad I got the chance to read this book.

Again, to Louisa Luna, I would totally read more stories with Cap and Vega!

4.5 stars/5

Fair warning: set aside enough time to finish Two Girls Down in one sitting because you won’t be able to stop until it's over. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: two young girls disappear during a quick shopping trip to Target. Their single mother, Jamie Brandt, is heartsick and distraught. Jamie’s aunt, Maggie Shambley, contacts Alice Vega, a famous California bounty hunter, to ask her to locate her missing nieces. In less than 24 hours, Vega arrives in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. She needs a partner, someone who knows the local scene. Max Caplan, “Cap,” is her choice—once a local cop, now a private detective.

Cap is a bit of a philosopher. A private detective has a lot of time to ponder human foibles while surreptitiously monitoring illicit activities. He’s divorced, so he understands the futility of anyone getting “to have it all.” Although, he’d be out of business if folks didn’t try—or so he muses during a nooner stakeout.

Maybe the only way it gets better is to have an hour with the waitress from the diner or the fresh young babysitter in a motel room or your car with the backseat folded into the trunk.

Maybe you’re just an asshole.

Cap had stopped flipping through the possibilities a long time ago. The truth was he didn’t care why they did it; it was just his job to catch them.

Living in a rural “town of fifteen thousand everyone looked familiar,” much to Cap’s dismay. “He hated knowing people.” Tragic incidents are hard to ignore when you know their story.

The former high school football star who od’ed on oxy and Heineken. Keep your small towns, thought Cap. Give me a city where I don’t recognize the corpse.

Vega’s a solitary sort, focused and methodical, as is exemplified by her pursuit of the perfect handstand. Group yoga classes were not for her. “She got sick quickly of the instructor’s monologue, of the incense, of the women and their personalized mats.” Her solution—to buy a book and learn on her own.

Practiced the handstand until she could do it. First against the wall, then in the middle of the room. First for two minutes, then five, then ten. Now fifteen minutes in the middle of the room at four or five in the morning when she woke up.

That methodical persistence is what Alice Vega brings to her profession of fugitive recovery. But even solitary Vega needs backup when she’s tracking missing people. She turns repeatedly to her computer guru, “Bastard,” for deep background. While Bastard searches for security camera feeds and the whereabouts of Jamie Brandt’s deadbeat former husband, Vega pours over the local police blotter. Bingo: a scandal in 2014—after the overdose death (in custody) of a local high school football star, a detective resigned. Max Caplan.

Vega reaches out to Cap and tells him why she needs his help. She’s good with video feeds—finding the girl’s father—and she has the Brandt family’s full cooperation, “but there’s a piece [she] can’t get to.”

“Witness statements,” said Cap.

“Yes. I could get employees from local businesses, but the people in the parking lot, passers-by; there’s no way I could get them all.”

She paused. Cap watched her eyes travel quickly to the corner of the room as she thought.

“I could get them. It would just take time.”

“Which you don’t have,” said Cap.

“Which I don’t have,” said Vega.

Cap turns Vega down but eventually changes his mind. Or perhaps his daughter Nell changes it for him, reminding him of advice he gave her the day he quit his police job: “You said every day we make a million little choices, and we should try to make the right ones as much as we can.” Nell knows, and so does Cap, that joining forces with Vega is the right thing to do.

Kylie and Bailey Brandt may not ever be found, and if they’re not found quickly, Vega knows from bitter experience that they probably won’t be found alive. That is the first question Jamie Brandt asks her.

“When you found them, were they alive, or what?”

Vega looked her right in the eyes and said, “Sixteen alive. One dead. And one alive but”—she tapped her head—“dead.”

Time ticking away like a time-bomb on a fuse—that’s the element that makes Two Girls Down stand apart from more conventional detective stories. That and the bleak, impoverished landscape of a community torn apart by an epidemic of OxyContin and meth. Like I said, you won’t be able to put it down.

Wow... Couldn't put this book down! TWO GIRLS DOWN by Louisa Luna is everything a mystery/thriller should be. This is one roller coaster ride from beginning to end... keeps you wanting more with every turn of the page! Fantastic writing, great story, and great characters... couldn't ask for anything more!!!