Book Review: The Girl With the Loudiong Voice by Abi Daré

This year, I decided to sign up for a book subscription service that would send me a mystery book every month. Though I read a lot, I can often read similar works. This fact is fine; the important thing about reading is that you read. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to broaden my horizons and read stuff I perhaps usually would not.

So, my first book in the subscription arrived, and it was Abi Daré’s Girl With The Louding Voice. 

This book is a debut novel. It follows Adunni, a 14-year-old girl growing up in Nigeria. Her greatest dream is to get an education and impact this world. But, sadly, her world has different plans. 

What makes this book unique is just how natural Adunni is. You root for her to get her dreams and cry with her when her path moves her further and further away from those dreams. I lost count of the times I wanted to jump through the page and throttle those doing her wrong, all while shaking some of the naivety out of our protagonist. But then, it is just that naivety that causes you to fall in love with her and root for her even more. 

Though, as I say, I just wanted to throttle some of the people in this book, it is incredible how Daré makes it abundantly clear that the real antagonist is not any of the characters (don’t get me wrong, a lot of the characters in this book are evil little creatures, for sure!) but the world which allows what happens to happen. Though she doesn’t make you sympathise with these characters completely, you can see what brought them to do what they do. But that is precisely the point. Life isn’t right and wrong, good and evil; while there are bad people in this world, they rarely start out that way, which is great to see reflected in this novel.

I want to say more, but I fear if I do I may spoil it for those who are yet to embark journeying with Adunni, and I thoroughly recommend you do!