Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - The Girl with the Louding Voice

This is my first 5 star read of 2024. And my first 5 star read in a good while. I am Nigerian like Adunni but Igbo instead of Yoruba. I was adopted and brought to London, England by my amazing mother where I live with her and my brother (also adopted). Adunni and parts of her life, particularly the second half of the book, could very well have been the life I could have led, had my mother not adopted me. A lot of girl children are not adopted and a lot of girls, like it was written in ‘The Book of Nigerian Facts’ work as maids or other serving roles from very young. It could have been me.

Reading this book was emotional, and sweet and I loved and rooted for Adunni through everything she went through. May her louding voice and the louding voice of the amazing author Abi Daré touch and inspire us all. This book has some sad and dark themes of child marriage, rape and indentured servitude and domestic violence. But it also tells the story of hope, of trials and tribulations, of mothers and their daughters, of education and family’s - both born and made - and of the desire to have better than you have and know better than you know. To learn what there is to learn. This book has touched me incredibly. I hope to write a book as good as this one some day. Abi Daré, you have inspired this fellow Nigerian woman to write.

This book has beautiful voice and an amazing and well crafted story. I wish Adunni well in her life. I know for certain that she has a louding voice. As I will have a window into her louding voice, forever preserved in history through this book. I hope the other girls in Nigeria and across the world will be able to have louding voices like Adunni.

I recommend this WHOLEHEARTEDLY.

Content Warnings

_fallinglight_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

melanieripple's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

bloodmaarked's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

reread 26/04/24:

read this in anticipation of And So I Roar which i just got the ARC for, and it's very easy to bump this up on reread to 5*. i love this, i love adunni, i love how it made me feel. i think being prepared for the broken english made this easier to enjoy, as i know it was a bit of a stumbling block for me the first time around.

✧ full review on my tumblr ✧

original review 17/06/20:

This book is a real gem of a story, and is an absolutely amazing debut from Abi Daré. Since reading the final page, my heart has felt so many different things!

The positives:

✧ The Girl with the Louding Voice is such a touching story. There are a lot of difficult themes tackled here: forced child marriage, rape, human trafficking, domestic servitude. It's not necessarily easy to read, and it pulls at the heartstrings. Several scenes throughout left me feeling awful. But at the same time, there are a lot of heartwarming scenes as well. Once I got invested, it was hard not to care. It's a story that really makes you think (something which I'll come back to at the end).

✧ Adunni, the main character, is just a star. My heart felt for her and her story the whole way through. You can't help but root for her and just hope that things get better. Other characters who look out for Adunni or act as parental figures, like Khadija, Tia, and Kofi, are also very compelling characters. The stories of Adunni and her supporting characters are sometimes heartbreaking, but also very uplifting.

✧ The Rebecca plot line is introduced pretty late, around 50% through the book. It wasn't a necessary plot, but I liked how it was handled. It added another element to the story without taking away from Adunni's story.

The negatives slightly less positives:

✦ This book is written using the voice of Adunni, a young girl from rural Nigeria with very little formal education. As such, the book is written entirely in broken English. This, for me, made it a little tough to get into the book at first, but after a while I got used to it and it ultimately didn't stop me from enjoying the book. It does lead me onto my next point though...

✦ It was a little slow-going at first. By this, I don't mean that things weren't happening or that the pace was too slow. Just for me, it was somewhere between 25-40% through the book before I found myself itching to pick the book back up again. I read this book for 11 days in total, but it was in the last two days that I read about 50% of the story, so you can see how it took some time for me to find my stride. This was probably partly down to the broken English used throughout, but I can't say for sure.

I really recommend this book and I look forward to reading it again. As I mentioned earlier in my review, The Girl with the Louding Voice makes you think, a lot. What really made this book so emotional is understanding that Adunni's story is unfortunately the story of so many young girls around the world. What happens to her is happening right now. So, I was moved to do a little research on the topic, and below I want to list a few charities that are working to help people like Adunni, and I hope that you can take a moment to look at what they're doing and even support if you are able.

Girls Not Brides
Plan International
End Slavery Now
Devatop Centre for Africa Development
ACE Charity Africa
Books For Africa

Content Warnings

leonormsousa's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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itsjadenbaby's review against another edition

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

I am sure this will sound like slander to most, but this book was difficult to get through for me. It was a bit slow-paced for my liking. I know it stands for important things, and for that, I appreciate it. However, I did not really enjoy this book.

Content Warnings

torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

helhas3letters's review

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

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