We’re celebrating the best books of August with novelist Abi Daré.

On this week’s Fully Booked, we welcome August with an episode highlighting some of its best books. First, editor-in-chief Tom Beer, fiction editor Laurie Muchnick, and young readers’ editors Mahnaz Dar and Laura Simeon share some of their top picks in books for the month. Then, novelist Abi Daré joins me to discuss And So I Roar (Dutton, Aug 6), the highly anticipated follow-up to her New York Times–bestselling debut, The Girl With the Louding Voice (2020).

Adunni, the vibrant, irrepressible 14-year-old protagonist of The Girl With the Louding Voice, returns as one of two narrators in And So I Roar. Her equally memorable counterpart is Tia, a wealthy, educated, compassionate woman living in Lagos, who helps Adunni escape indentured servitude and secure the education she desperately desires. Here’s a bit of our starred review:

“As this novel begins, just days after the previous one ended, Adunni is staying with Tia, the neighbor who rescued her, and is about to enter a boarding school on scholarship. Unfortunately, those plans are interrupted when Mr. Kola and a chieftain from Ikati, the village where she grew up, appear at her door and accuse her of murdering Khadija, demanding she return to the village for judgment. Determined to clear her name, she goes with them—and Tia goes, too.…Daré doesn’t shy away from melodrama; deaths, injuries, and children born to fathers whose identities are concealed pile up rapidly. But readers willing to go along for a ride will be treated to prose that is alternately poetic and comic, two heroines worth cheering for, and sharp insights into the contrast between urban and rural Nigeria.”

Daré and I begin by discussing what it was like to receive such a warm reception for her debut novel. We chat about whether to call And So I Roar a sequelor a follow-up to The Girl With the Louding Voice, and why the distinction matters. We contrast what it was like to write in the voice of Tia, who’s wealthy, educated, well-traveled, and a bit sheltered, with what it was like to write in the voice of Adunni, whose use of English undergoes a transformation as she acquires more vocabulary and experience. We speak of Adunni’s big dream—to get an education—and Tia’s dreams for herself. We talk about the length of time the novel covers, different modes of storytelling, Adunni’s sense of humor, Daré’s research for the book, and much more.

And in a sponsored interview, I speak with Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today–bestselling author Barbara O’Neal, whose new novel is Memories of the Lost (Lake Union, July 30). In this intricate, satisfying romantic mystery, set in New York City and Devon, England, a successful artist uncovers a life-changing secret in the months after her mother’s death and meets a handsome stranger with whom she has an uncanny amount in common.

BEST BOOKS OF AUGUST 2024:

Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss (Viking)

Island of Whispers by Frances Hardinge, illus. by Emily Gravett (Amulet/Abrams)

Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay (Kokila)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Adam by John Gordon

Artistic and Life-Like: Photography in Washington, 1850-1900 by Tim Greyhavens

Make America Kosher Again by Marc Daniels

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.