Susan Duerden's Scottish brogue is going to divide this room right down the middle. I'm calling it now.
I finished this one during a particularly brutal week of grading sophomore essays on The Great Gatsby—you know, the week where every paper opens with "In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald..." as if I'd forgotten what we'd been reading for three weeks. Sixteen hours of medieval Scotland felt like a vacation by comparison. And here's the thing about Garwood's Ransom: it's comfort food dressed in chainmail. You know exactly what you're getting, and that's not a criticism.
The Narrator Situation (And Why Your Mileage Will Vary)
Let me be direct. Duerden does something interesting with the male voices—she pitches them deep, gives them that gravelly Highland warrior texture. Brodick Buchanan sounds like a man who's spent forty years shouting orders across battlefields. The problem? Sometimes he also sounds like my grandfather after a cold, and not in the charming way. There's a scene where the elders are arguing, and I swear I could hear the spittle hitting the microphone. My wife Denise, who was walking the lakefront with me, actually asked if I was listening to a podcast about emphysema.
But here's where it gets complicated. Duerden's accent work for the Scots is genuinely good—consistent, committed, never slipping into parody. She differentiates Ramsey from Brodick in ways that matter, giving them distinct speech patterns beyond just "deep voice #1" and "deep voice #2." When the comedic dialogue lands, her timing is impeccable. I laughed out loud during a scene involving the women's scheming, which earned me concerned looks from a jogger.
The whispering, though. Good lord, the whispering. Gillian whispers. Bridgid whispers. Every female character seems to communicate in breathy undertones like they're sharing secrets in a library. By hour eight, I wanted to shake them and say "Project from your diaphragm! You're in a castle, not a confessional!"
Garwood Knows Exactly What She's Doing
This reminds me of what Hemingway said about writing—that the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Garwood's prose isn't Hemingway (obviously), but there's craft here that's easy to dismiss. The setup is pure melodrama: orphaned girl, murdered father, stolen treasure, evil baron. But the execution? The pacing across sixteen hours never drags. Gillian's arc from traumatized child to confident woman actually earns its emotional beats. That same careful character development shows up in Nine Lives, though the setting couldn't be more different.
The romance is slow-burn in the best way. Brodick and Gillian circle each other with the kind of tension that historical romance readers crave—he's gruff and protective, she's spirited but scarred. It's not reinventing anything. It's executing the formula with precision. My students would hate this. I love it. Better off Dead has that same guilty pleasure quality—formulaic done well, which my AP Lit kids would dismiss in a heartbeat.
And the ending. The ending is genuinely sweet without being saccharine. Duerden's delivery there—she slows down, lets the emotional weight settle. Worth the investment.
Who's Going to Love This (And Who Should Run)
If you loved The Secret and wished for more Highland warrior energy, this is its spiritual successor. Garwood fans already know what they're signing up for. New listeners who enjoy Diana Gabaldon but want something less sprawling will find a comfortable home here.
But if you're sensitive to narration quirks? If whispery female voices make you want to throw your phone? Skip the audio, grab the paperback. This is not negotiable. The reviews are split for a reason—Duerden's choices are specific, and specific means polarizing.
Also: content warning for violence and some spicy scenes. Nothing gratuitous, but this isn't a cozy read.
The Annotated Verdict
Here's what I kept thinking during those sixteen hours: this audiobook is like a really good production of a Shakespeare comedy at a regional theater. Is it the Royal Shakespeare Company? No. Are some of the accents a bit much? Yes. But the performers commit, the story moves, and by the final act, you're genuinely invested in whether these ridiculous people find happiness.
Duerden elevates the material when she's in her groove. The Scottish accents, the emotional peaks, the comedic timing—all of it works. The raspy male voices and excessive whispering? Those are real flaws that'll bother some listeners more than others.
Worth pausing the faculty meeting for? Absolutely. Worth a credit at full price? That depends entirely on your tolerance for narration quirks. If you can roll with them, you'll have a genuinely enjoyable sixteen hours. If you can't, you'll be counting the whispers like I count comma splices in student essays—with increasing despair.
The prose deserves to be savored. Just maybe at 1.0x speed, with patience for the occasional octogenarian warrior voice.
