Krystin | TheF*ckingTwist's Reviews > The Janes

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I loved Louisa Luna’s first book Two Girls Down with a fiery passion that tingled my loins. Ew, don’t say loins.

But for real, I loved that book. It was one of my top five reads of 2018. So I was totally on board for a sequel because Alice Vega is one of the most bomb-ass female characters in crime fiction right now. That’s not an exaggeration. I love her aloof, serious and damaged personality. I love that she does yoga in her underwear for breakfast and for lunch it's full-body tackles of men twice her size without hesitation. She takes no shit, doesn’t play nice and has no tolerance for bullshit. Plus, she’s smart AF and every time she gets herself out of a tricky pickle I am mildly aroused. What I'm saying is, I want to be her when I grow up.



Her relationship with quasi-partner, retired detective Max “Cap” Caplan, is sexually tense at the right levels, but also romantic and sweet in an honest way - nothing mushy or easy, or even overly dramatic that would make me fucking hope they both die alone.

To be honest, this follow-up novel didn’t exactly pack the same punch for me. It’s still good, but something about it just lacked the sparkle of the first one that knocked my bits off.

This time around, Vega goes out to California and asks Cap to join her, when the bodies of two teen girls are found near San Diego. One of the girls has Vega’s name written on a piece of paper, so the FBI brings the missing-person expert in to help. There’s this underlying suspicion that maybe Vega herself is a suspect because cops are fucking stupid like that sometimes. Turns out we get deep into sex trafficking, immigration, illegal border crossing and lots of other real-world issues that are very apropos in this Twilight Zone version of life that we find ourselves living in.

The writing is fast-paced, the plot points bring a feeling of constant action and movement, but the crime element wasn’t as gripping as the first book for me, and occasionally the action moments were a bit over-the-top. Overall, I’m chalking up my rating to fatigue. I’m exhausted by the real-world terribleness that follows us every waking minute of every day and this book was more of that, so it just came to me at the wrong time.



Was it well-done, honest, true-to-life and socially relevant mixed with action? Completely! But that “kids in cages” storyline wasn’t what I needed right now – even if Luna makes some valid, not-preachy points about the American immigration situation and outlook. Reading it was a bit of a Debbie Downer. Everything sucks already and I can barely handle it at this point, so the escapism I’m craving needs to divert my brain away from that, not engage in it even more... or I might never mentally recover from this forsaken timeline.

What I did LOVE was the author letting us into Vega’s life a little bit more. There were some small reveals about how she lives her life when she’s not doing her P.I. shit which rounded out the character more – whether it was her fuck-buddy or her inner thoughts or the whys to her morning rituals. She’s still a major badass who has little time for emotions or relationships and is partially just here for the money, but that doesn’t mean she needs to lack depth.



The dialogue is snappy and witty, the writing has just the right amount of description to build a world without oversaturating it, and the plot never stops moving.

The particular plot just didn’t possess the same magic that the first novel did for me. Still, if you can stand to read about sex trafficking and immigration right now, it’s definitely one to read.


⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 4 stars