Two Alone

By: Sandra Brown

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's Summary

Beautiful and self-confident businesswoman Rusty Carlson was hurt, terrified and alone with a man she feared. But one thing was certain – she would surely die without his help. Vietnam vet Cooper Landry had a deep-rooted grudge against beautiful women like Rusty. Experience had taught him they were takers. But he’d survived far worse dangers, and this time he’d be damned if he’d let her risk his chance for survival. But there were predators in the dense woods – both animals and human – and the odds were against them. They could handle that. What Rusty and Cooper weren’t prepared for was the discovery that they desired more than just survival….

©2007 Sandra Brown (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Sensuality, believable characters, totally hot!.

Sandra Brown is one of my favorite authors and paired with Joyce Bean I felt confident in making this purchase. This is another great love story by Brown and Bean is an excellent narrator. On a steamy scale with one being the least amount of steam and 10 being totally hot. This story gets a ten from me because of its sensuality and believable characters. I don’t know how Sandra Brown could make someone hopping around on crunches in the kitchen into a hot scene; well you will just have to hear it for yourself. I am about to do a rewind and listen to this one again.

Good for its Time

This is one of Brown's earlier books. Its a rerelease. For its time it is an ok read. Plot was predictable. I have said before its not the ending so much as it is the journey. If you are a Brown fan, you know how far her writing has come today. This story revolved around an aircraft crash and the two people who survive. Totally predicatable, but a good read nonetheless.

Good 80's Romance

It was nice to revisit a novel that was an actual romance instead of a sex manual . I found nothing missing even though most of the love scenes were implied rather than being explicit. This was an easy read and is just as satisfying as an audio.

Loved it.

I love all of Sandra Brown, and I have listen to most. Joyce Bean is one of my favorites.

Love to hate it (sort of)

When I stop and think about this book, it has a lot of things that I normally dislike in Romance novels. Cooper, the male could really be a macho jerk. The woman was at times way too submissive and naive. Yet, I couldn't stop listening to this! I stayed up all night!

What is it about Sandra Brown's writing that makes me more tolerant of things I hate in other novels? Perhaps in spite of some of the bad (to me) formulaic themes of the writing, she knows how to spin a story and create heat between characters?

I thought the narration was fine. Perhaps not the best, but acceptable. Didn't bother me.

Earlier work but still a good read.

Would you listen to Two Alone again? Why?

Probably, because I typically miss some of the details on my first read. But I wouldn't read it a third time. This is one of Sandra Brown's early novels, and while entertaining, can't compete with her later ones, like Lethal, my favorite.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Two Alone?

I think it was when Cooper came crashing through the cabin door and threw a knife into the mountain man's chest.

Which scene was your favorite?

I liked the one when Rusty opens the front door of her L.A. home and finds Cooper standing there, as well as the ones that immediately followed.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I have mixed emotions about this book. There were number of times when I thought Cooper was unbearably crude and verbally abusive. At the same time, there were moments when Rusty came across as unbelievabaly naive and not too bright. That was especially true in her failure to detect anything wrong with the two mountain men, and her faulting Cooper for killing them. It was also true in her failure to recognize, or at least admit, that her occasional and inadvertent nudity had any effect on Cooper. One begins to wonder what world she's been living in. Even so, some of their conversations were amusing and sometimes even funny. This was kind of a microcosm of the war between the sexes: a very masculine guy irresistibly attracted to a very feminine woman and the unavoidable conflict that engenders.

Any additional comments?

No.

Love Story

Love story with a twist and lots of drama. Weekend read that i enjoyed on the deck

Outdated romance

Written in 1987, this book features Cooper, a mustachioed bully and woman-hater, who gets stranded in the Canadian wilderness with Rusty, a red-headed Beverly Hills beauty who is supposedly a successful real estate agent, but at 27 years old is still a complete daddy’s girl.

I can handle romance tropes, or stories with brash scoundrels or mountain men, if there’s more humor or hearts of gold underneath the gruffness to counteract the trite and the trope. I was hoping for a Romancing the Stone type of H/h interaction. But, the entire book was him being a misogynist with a boob fixation and her being a vapid socialite. No humor, little action; just five hours of them vs. the wild… lots of being cold, dirty, hungry, and hurt.

Weird writing:
On the one hand, there isn’t the explicit language of today’s romances. On the other hand, their interludes are described in awkward or vague ways. For example, we are told they “dallied” or “knew” each other… as if Ms. Brown felt the need to describe nooky only in the biblical sense. Huh? Or, one time he says “that was great” and she asks if she did it right…and we realize she just went down on him. Weirdly vague and yet sexual at the same time.

Come to think of it, the weirdness bled into other areas, as if a schoolmarm wrote this. There are multiple places where Brown had the characters use the F word, but wouldn’t herself write it into the story.
For example, Brown writes:
-“you look like you’ve been royally (and then he used a gutter word that made her blush)”… ?
Why not just have him say “ you looked like you’ve been royally F-ed?”
-“the exchange of erotic dialogue” instead of “dirty talk”
-“he used a word that describes people mating” instead of “he swore” or “F, he exclaimed.”

Final weirdness is the mustache fixation. It’s like Cooper’s mustache was the third MC of this book. Seriously, so many descriptions of his mustache, or him biting his mustache, or his breath crystallizing on his mustache, or his mustache leaving whisker burn on her skin, or “you know the joke about the size of a man’s mustache”… which I don’t, and which Ms. Brown never actually tells us. Just weird.

Does not stand the test of time

This book was originally released in 1987 although I had to dig a bit to find that information. I tried to read it knowing that it would be a bit outdated but the sexism and the masochistic ideals from the hero was too much for me. He actually blamed her sex and her beauty for the trouble they ran into with a couple of crazy mountain men that wanted to kill him and rape her. He accused her of “knowing she riled them up” by brushing her hair. Brushing. Her. Hair. And this is just one example of the ignorant and hurtful things he said about her and her femaleness. 😒 To be fair, her naïveté about the intentions of those men was written with purpose to highlight her “city ways” but reading it today in the 21st century just made her look stupid and clueless. I like Sandra Brown books but her writing has come a lot farther since the 80’s. I recommend her later books.

Awful

If I was not familiar with many of Sandra Brown’s other novels, I would never read another. Cooper was rude, arrogant and pompous; she was naive and unbelievable being a successful business woman who could not identify some dangerous men. I could not finish

Savage Survival

Quaint enjoyable 1970s adventure drama love story. Rusty and Cooper survive a plane crash, before they embark on an emotional trek through a second wilderness of Cooper's hangups and trauma from Vietnam.

This writer knows her craft.

Excellent narration.

ENJOYABLE.