Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Girl with the Louding Voice

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

queenofthenorth's review

Go to review page

challenging 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

4.0

Content Warnings

leonormsousa's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

Content Warnings

jessalex610's review

Go to review page

dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.0

Initial reaction: I love the message of the story. And I was really rooting for Adunni and her resilient spirit. But I had some problems with the pacing, especially towards the end. I feel like we could’ve gotten so much more out of Adunni’s character development and especially with Miss Tia’s relationship but I feel like it was paced too quickly. It made a very beautiful, liberating relationship just seem very forced and confusing. basically as soon as we transition from Ikati to Lagos, the Lagos portion just felt…off.

Content Warnings