Torrent

I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at the ‘teens in Tuscany’ premise—until Pam Turlow’s narration sold me on Evangelia’s opening line: *“Prophecies are just fanfic with better PR.”* That’s when I knew *Torrent* wasn’t going to be another *Outlander* Lite. Turlow’s performance is the audiobook’s secret weapon; she gives Evangelia a rasp that’s equal parts exhaustion and wit, while Gabriella’s voice cracks with a desperation that makes her visions feel like migraines, not plot devices. The sisters’ bickering—*“You’re treating the Black Death like a Yelp review!”*—lands because Turlow sells their sibling shorthand, the kind built on years of shared eye-rolls. Bergren’s worldbuilding is where the audiobook stumbles slightly. The Renaissance Siena is lushly detailed (you’ll *smell* the tanneries), but the rules of time-travel feel conveniently fuzzy when the plot demands it. A mid-book reveal about the sisters’ lineage strains credulity, and the romantic subplot with a brooding artist veers into *Twilight*-esque territory with all the “smoldering glances” descriptions. Yet the pacing saves it: the final act’s siege sequence is a white-knuckle listen, with Turlow’s breathless delivery making the sisters’ split-second choices feel visceral. The real triumph is how the audiobook uses sound to underscore the sisters’ disorientation—sudden drops in volume during Gabriella’s visions, the way Latin prayers morph into static. It’s not a perfect listen, but it’s a *smart* one, especially for anyone who’s ever wondered if they’d be the hero or the idiot in a time-travel scenario. (Spoiler: These sisters are both.)