Review of The Janes by Louisa Luna

If you like gritty PI stories, author Louisa Luna should definitely be on your list! Check out my review of The Janes by Louisa Luna!

The Janes (Alice Vega #2) by Louisa Luna: Overview

• Published on January 21, 2020 by Doubleday
• More by this author: Tell Me Who You Are
• Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.

Review of The Janes by Louisa Luna

Now that I’ve read the second book in the series, I’m here to say that if you enjoy gritty PI or police procedurals, books like the Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais, the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly, or the Tess Monaghan books by Laura Lippman, you should definitely add these books to your list.

First off: Do you need to read Two Girls Down to enjoy and understand The Janes? Technically no, but there’s backstory and book one is where the relationship of Alice and Cap begins. (I reviewed Two Girls Down, book one of this series, here.)

Book two kicks off as Alice Vega is contacted by the San Diego police department to help in their investigation of two Jane Does. Alice agrees and gets Cap to come and join her. He’s still a little banged up from their first case together, but he agrees. They need to find out who these very young women are and what happened to them. Soon Cap and Alice realize there is a reason Alice was hired and are no longer sure who they can trust.

I don’t want to give too much away here, so I’ll go into what I like about these books.

The Alice/Cap relationship. Love them! She’s a lot more tough, contained and closed-off, and he’s sort of the more emotionally expressive one. They definitely had the beginnings of an attraction in book one, and that slowly develops more here.

The plotting. Writing a mystery is (I think) one of the hardest things to do, because you have to work backwards – figuring out the solution and then dropping breadcrumbs for the reader to follow. These books are really well-plotted – keeping the action moving and the stakes rising rather than just suspense and then a big info dump.

The topics. I generally shy away from books about violence against and exploitation of women. But I feel like Luna doesn’t just use these as plot devices. She writes respectfully and empathetically about some really tough topics.

Have you read these? Are you a fan of mysteries? Talk to me in comments!