As addictive, cinematic, and binge-worthy a narrative as The Wire and The Killing, Two Girls Down introduces Louisa Luna as a thriller writer of immense talent and verve.
When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.
With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.
When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.
With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.
Two Girls Down releases on January 9th and is currently available for pre-order.
Momma Says: 2 stars ⭐⭐
When I picked this one up, I expected a gritty, and possibly dark, mystery and the story does start out with that potential. The beginning drew me in with the interactions between Jamie Brandt and her girls on the day that they were taken. From that point on, the story quickly fizzled for me as it became more a procedural type story of Alice and Cap following clues. This in itself wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing, but the number of characters brought in and the heavy dialogue made this tale quite cumbersome and at times, convoluted. It may also have helped if the main characters had been more likable. Cap is a likable enough character, but Alice, who is supposed to be this tough, "enigmatic" bounty hunter, is just a hot mess. She's seems almost without emotion and then turns to violence in the blink of an eye. I was also left a bit confused by the dangling carrot of a possible romance between these two. That angle either needed to be better developed or left out entirely. As it stands, it just felt like filler which this one certainly did not need. The biggest drawback for this reader was that the story drags on for so long and the number of people questioned and re-questioned begins to run together. There is a decent action sequence toward the end along with an interesting twist to the story, but by that time, it was just too little, too late.
After seeing the number of four and five-star ratings for Two Girls Down, I realize that I'm in the minority, but it is what it is. The author clearly has talent and this book had great potential, but I prefer a much faster pace over getting bogged down in procedure.
**ARC provided by NetGalley and Doubleday Books
Momma😘
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