DNF Review: The Girl With The Louding Voice By Abi Dare

Publisher: Dutton

Format Read: E-Book
Source: From the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 4, 2020
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Google | Kobo
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Blurb from goodreads:

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.

When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.

But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can—in a whisper, in song, in broken English—until she is heard.

Steph's's Thoughts:

When I agreed to review this book, I was excited. It has been awhile since I have written a review and this one looked like a really good way to jump back in. I was hoping for an inspirational read and a young woman fighting against the world to get an education seemed like exactly that read.

Unfortunately, for me, the book fell far short of what I was hoping to read. I was actually unable to read the entire book because of the way the author chose to narrate the story. The story was written from the point of view of Adunni, a fourteen year old Nigerian girl. Adunni narrates the story in what is supposed to be broken English. Now before I go any further, my day job has me communicating with people from around the world who are not fluent in English and I am not fluent in their language. We communicate through emails. Sometimes these emails are in broken English and sometimes they are written in their own language and then run through Google translate, or the other way around. I also work on a daily basis with people who do not speak fluent English so I am very familiar with communicating with people who use broken English.

The author did the entire book in broken English. I totally understand what she was trying to do. She was trying to tell the story of a young girl who is struggling to get an education and communicate how hard that is in her part of the world. I get it, but the book just didn't flow for me. It is hard to get immersed in the story when you are constantly having to backtrack what you read in order to understand what is going on. I was constantly thinking to myself "Did I read that right?".

I have read many of these types of books over the years and usually the author only puts the dialogue part of the story in broken English or the heavy accent of the region. However, the entire book is written in broken English and I could not get past it. Something else seemed off with the style that is hard to really put my finger on, it was almost like the character was not a fourteen year old girl struggling with English but a much younger character. As I said, I am used to communicating with people on a daily basis who do not speak English as their first language and something was just off.

I skipped ahead in the book hoping that it would get better. Nope. Since I couldn't get immersed in the book, I couldn't connect with the character. I can spend hours chatting with many of my coworkers, so maybe if I had gotten this as an audiobook, I could have gotten through it.  I usually love books with strong female leads but this one just fell short for me because of the format. There is an excerpt available on Amazon to try, so I highly suggest that you try it before you buy it.