Disclaimer: I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Martiza Moulite is a welcome addition to YA.

Told through a series of journal entries, emails, tweets, letters, and texts, this is a uniquely told story. Alaine Beauparlant is a first-generation Haitian-American. She attends a fancy private school with unique classes, and for a class assignment, she picks Haiti and must give the background of several key people in Haiti’s fight for freedom. However, she decides to treat this assignment as a bit of a joke, something that her teacher calls her on. After her news anchor mother has a buzzworthy incident on camera, Alaine faces a bit of bullying from one of her classmates, and she decides to get revenge with the project’s help.

Ultimately, this gets her booted temporarily from her private school, and her father sends her off to Haiti with her aunt and her mother who is privately dealing with the fallout from the news incident.

Once in Haiti, Alaine begins to find out more about her heritage. At this point, Alaine’s voice shifts, and we no longer hear the sardonic wit from Alaine. While this is an understandable character shift resulting from what she deals with at this time, I was still disappointed, and I became less engaged in the story.

Overall, however, this is very well told, and the style of story-telling works very well.

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine releases September 3.

The idea of the story was super exciting and I was so looking forward to this YA. Unfortunately I didn’t like it as much as I thought I was going to. At first I was contributing it to the format of the kindle arc because it was missing chunks of sentences and letters and I had to piece together some parts. But I think it was the story itself that was chunky and put together. It didn’t flow well. I have a love/hate relationship with Alaine and her family. Her snarkiness and rebellion seemed so very in character and she was hilarious, but at times obsessively written. Another pet peeve was how Alaine interacted with her peers and teachers. I get that she is a strong female main character but for a 17 year old with such high profile mom and a pretty in-tune dad I would have expected a bit more respectfulness. Also the adults could have been a bit more hashed out and more developed since they were a big part of Alaine’ s story. The female monarchs of her family were very immature whereas Alaine’s father was the only one who acted like an adult.

The plot itself seemed to turn completely in the middle and the ending was very strange and fast. At first it seemed it was concentrating on Alaine learning more about Haiti’s history and rebellion for a school assignment. All of a sudden it flipped and it was about this family curse and there is a death that is completely passed over and unaddressed. Then the ending is wrapped up and a bow thrown on haphazardly. Not my favorite.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC for this honest review.

Alaina is a snarky teenager coming to terms with her mom’s early onset Alzheimer’s, dealing with being privileged in Miami/Haiti, and what that means; and her complicated feelings about voodoo and her family’s history.

It felt a little clunky sometimes, but I think that was mostly bc of the formatting. It was honestly the worst digital arc I’d ever seen. Whole sentences on the wrong page, and lots of sentence fragments floating around.

Let’s start with the good stuff! The representation was really good with the Alzheimer’s story and everything Haitian. But it just dragged on. There were a lot of times where I was just reading assignments that were given to Alaine that I didn’t really care for and didn’t add to the story, and then there was times where we would be reading emails Alaine would send and receive. It was redundant.
When she was finally in Haiti I would have thought she would go explore and find information on her own but, like, letters were given to her explaining her family history and things written in her mother’s diary.
The only reason she went to Haiti was because she messed up her assignment so they were giving her another chance to turn in a better one but it’s never really mentioned after she gets there, and then in the end it’s addressed to her teacher who gave her a failing grade on the original assignment. I understand the main point of this was to see her family secrets but the book spent a lot of time talking about the assignment in the beginning. I didn’t think a curse storyline would come up but it did and I just feel like that was kind of lazy. And her trusting someone who her parents and relatives don’t even trust? She’s smarter than that.

All in all, the message the ending sends is lovely. Just to spend time with someone how they are, and not trying to change something that can’t be changed. It just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to Harlequin Teen and Netgalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Review previously posted on Goodreads.

I was drawn to this book by its gorgeous cover and intriguing description, and it did not disappoint! I always enjoy novels that play with epistolary format or other forms of writing outside of straight prose, so I liked the authors' use of texts, school assignments, etc, mixed in with the narrative. I loved the vivid sense of place in this story as well and think it depicts Haiti so beautifully in a way not often found in popular literature. I hope for more from these authors!

I LOVED this book. It had strong female characters, plenty of atmosphere details, and a good look at complicating people's assumptions about race, immigrancy, and education. I loved how the authors balanced many forms of writing (like texts and assignments). The voice was so strong that you immediately got into the character. And, I read a lot of YA...I hadn't seen one that used a school assignment to such great effect. Overall, this is an exceptional YA story for anyone who loves strong women. Do not miss this book.

I love the premise of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine. Representation matters in YA, and protagonist Alaine is a strong leading lady. I loved the themes of family and culture in this book. The mixed media narrative format made things a tad difficult to engage with at times.

I like this authors debut novel! It has such a unique premise that I had to give it a go. I found the Haitian culture so fascinating!
Alain’s character was super funny and witty. The way she talks about “adulting” was super great! I enjoyed the teen voices in this book too! Their voices really made the story relatable.
I had a hard time following the text in this arc and I wasn’t crazy about all of the articles and add ins but it was a good story. I hope to read more from this author.