There is no doubt that Daré’s Girl With the Louding Voice is resonating with readers. The buzz around the book has been incredibly heartwarming.

Recently, the book was listed on Goodreads‘ top 10 most popular debut novels.

Amazon-owned Goodreads is a social media platform where readers share books, quotes, comments, and reviews. With over 20 million users, Goodreads is a good measure for how readers are embracing a book.

The top-10 debut list looks at novels published from February through June 2020. It is selected from a longer list featuring the site’s most popular books published in 2020.  On the most popular books list, The Girl With the Louding Voice placed at No 29 out of 158 and has an average rating of 4.50 out of 5. The book has been added by 64,401 people at the time of filing this report.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Desmond Elliot Prize, The Girl with the Louding Voice follows the life of Adunni, a young Nigerian girl trapped in a life of servitude and determined nonetheless to overcome the roadblocks on her path to success. It was awarded The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was listed as one of our Anticipated Books of 2020.

Read the synopsis:

“The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams.  Despite being sold first as a child bride and then as an unpaid maid to a wealthy family in Lagos, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same.  Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world.”

See the full list of most popular debut novels here.

Congrats to Abi Daré!

FYI, the book is currently being read on BBC4 radio. Follow this link to see how to listen in.