Tuesday Series: Two Girls Down (Alice Vega #1) by Loisa Luna

 

Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons,

     Two Girls Down is published by Penguin Random House under their Doubleday imprint. In it, we are introduced to eight-year-old Bailey Brandt and her ten-year-old sister, Kylie. They are different as night and day, however, they both share a penchant for mischief. On their way to a party with their single mother, Jamie, the girls mysteriously disappear at a strip mall. Left in the family car alone, the girls venture out to get ice cream samples while their mother is in a department store getting items for the party. When Jamie Brandt returns, the girls are nowhere to be found. After several inquiries at various stores in the strip mall, the police are called in.  

  When a famous bounty hunter, Alice Vega, crosses Private Investigator Max Caplan's path, he is presented with an intriguing offer. If he helps Vega find the missing Brandt girls, she will give him half of the fee she is charging the girls' family. Vega has been hired eighteen times to find missing persons. And all eighteen times she has found them. She is no-nonsense and refuses to take no for an answer. He is reluctant to be involved but Caplan knows that if they do not move quickly, Bailey and Kylie may end up dead. 

  Louisa Luna has created three hundred pages of a crisp and dangerous thriller. Her narrative was like a shark circling a boat.  I read into the late hours of the night. Luna also presents the subjects of human trafficking and child abuse in a non-exploitative way. She instead uses the emotions of Caplan and Vega and their experiences to show us the underworld that these characters have seen. I appreciated this aspect, and applaud the author for this. The page-turning twists and turns led to a crazy finale that left me forgetting the world around me.

  I read this book in part with the narration of actress Tavia Gilbert. There were times while she read the novel that I thought there was more than one narrator present. She showed an invested interest in Louisa Luna's characters, presenting them carefully as if they were her own. I was amazed by her work on this book.

   I gave Two Girls Down a much-deserved five out of five stars. I highly recommend this novel to those who love a gritty and exciting crime thriller. You will not be able to put it down.

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