Two Is a Pattern

De: Emily Waters

Narrado por: Anastasia Watley

A charged lesbian romantic suspense set in the early nineties, with gripping twists, turns, and surprising secrets.

A mission gone wrong leads to rising-star CIA operative Annie Weaver quitting her job and reinventing herself as a college student. But the CIA, desperate for her skills, refuses to let her go without a price.

Annie finds herself juggling classes in criminology and falling for her beautiful landlord, Professor Helen Everton, while dealing with off-the-books secret missions for an increasingly controlling ex-boss.

As the perceptive Helen circles ever closer to the truth, Annie has to figure out how to keep her freedom without putting Helen in danger—and without revealing her own past.

Contains mature themes.

©2024 Emily Waters (P)2024 Tantor Media

Not your typical romance

This was written with much more complexity than the usual “romance”. There is actually a well developed story line - interesting in itself - which accompanies and supports the romance. It was refreshing to find a story in this genre that did not resonate completely with something that you’ve already heard before a thousand times. I highly recommend this book. The author did an exceptional job as did the narrator.

Needed an epilogue

The story was very good. I’m very frustrated at the abrupt ending. It was hard to see what happened in the main character when she got shot and taken away from what had become her environment that made her feel whole.

Great story

I loved everything about this book. The characters were interesting and the story was intriguing

Needs to be twenty minutes longer!

This book was actually far better than I thought it would be, and kept me engaged throughout. It captured both the sexism and the institutional homophobia of the time, and though I have no idea whether its portrayal of covert intelligence work in the last days of the Cold War is accurate, it certainly seemed believable. It's always interesting to be reminded of how different life was before mobile phones-we really did have to spend a lot of time just finding a phone! The MCs were both likeable and interesting.

However, unlike most books, where the book is better than the movie, this story would probably work far better on film, where the cinematography could resolve some of the ambiguities-especially with the ending, but also some of the scene changes. Perhaps the narrator could have paused for longer between scenes, but it sometimes took a bit for me to register that the action had shifted.

There are certainly times when an ambiguous ending "works" (especially in short stories or when you're trying to make a point about how complicated real life can be) but I think I'm probably speaking for most romance fans when I say that after investing a substantial period of time into the lives of the characters, we like everything "tied up in a bow", not just being assured that there was a "happily ever after", but how many puppies their dogs had. UPDATE; There is apparently a sequel to this novel in the works-and it it resolves my questions I would raise my story rating from four to five stars.

Lovely story

One of the best sapphic books I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. Kept me on my toes throughout literally to the last second. I hope part two is in the works I would love a continuation of Annie and Helen’s story