I was very excited to read this digital advanced copy from Net Galley based on the beautiful cover artwork and the intriguing description. I am always interested in reading books that are set in different places and I was really looking forward to learning more about Haiti.

Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my hopeful expectations. I almost gave up on it a few times, but I really kept thinking it might get better. The main character, Alaine was well-written and a character that I could see holding up in many novels/settings but the rest of the characters felt like sketches as opposed to complete characters and the story line was too confusing to really get attached to anyone.

It really didn't help that there were major issues with formatting in the digital version of this book making it even more challenging to read. There were many sections that were out of order, forcing me to re-read sections to figure out what was going on and there were headers and titles in the middle of pages throughout.

I received a copy of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine from Harlequin TEEN (US & Canada) through Netgalley.

I seriously love Alaine. I'd love to read more about her.

The story is told through school reports, news, articles and text messages and is a bit jarring at first but the storytelling makes up for it.

It's got family secrets and a curse and a witty protagonist that made me want to cheer.

Such beautiful writing. I couldn't put this book down when I was reading it. I was absolutely captivated by the story and the characters and the writing makes me want to see more from this author..

A fantastic cover and vibrant, fun main character don't overcome the extreme all over the place story.

This book is perfect for:
People who like books in diary form
People who like a touch of magical realism
People who love vacation/study abroad YA

Alaine is smart, and funny and a little bit quirky. As the daughter of Haitian immigrants she has a relationship with her homeland that makes her feel not-quite American and not-quite Haitian. When her absentee journalist mother has a meltdown on National television, her world is turned upside down. A school project goes awry at the same time that a school bully pushes her over the edge and that means a one-way ticket to the homeland she's never learned to love firsthand.

Written in diary entries along with text messages, newspaper clippings and emails we get to see the real Haiti through her eyes while she tries to break the family curse that has left her exiled, her beloved aunt unmarried, and her mother suffering from a terrible disease.

I loved the book, even when I found the emails, text messages and other ephemera a little jarring. But that's just me. There have been a number of books lately that use the same method of storytelling that I just couldn't get through, but the plot of Dear, Haiti kept me engaged.

There is a love interest, but it doesn't overtake the story. The themes that matter most are family and secrets, and the best secrets are always family secrets, because those hurt the most. The idea of Haiti being a hellscape of poverty is smashed as well as the idea that there is only one immigrant story to tell in America. We forget about Haiti, but after reading this story you never will. I suggest reading this book poolside or beachside with your journal nearby.


If you like this then try...
Great by Sara Benincasa
It's a Great Gatsby retelling set in a seaside town and featuring a bi protagonist. You'll get the same beachy feeling that you get from Dear Haiti with a little mystery thrown in.

I really wanted to like this book. What drew me in was the synopsis and when I started the book I was really interested however the weak character development, and convoluted plot stopped me from enjoying the book.
Starting off with what I liked, I really liked the familial relationships in this book. Often times in YA novels, parents and families aren’t really a big part of the story arc, but in this one family was first and foremost and I enjoyed seeing their relationships develop over time.
I didn’t like how there were anecdotes like diary entries, news, and text messages just tossed into the story as it tended to disrupt for the storyline and made the plot harder to follow. There also didn’t seem to be a one clear plot as there were many things going on at the same time so I was confused and bored.
Characters weren’t very well developed with characters being put into a box and not being fully fleshed out. We would get an initial impression of the character and they wouldn’t be built upon after that.
I gave this book three stars, because the writing style was engaging and the family relationship was interesting, but the character development and plot were the book’s greatest shortcoming.
I received this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

I'm not one to give up on a book even if it's not thrilling me. If reading it feels like a chore, then it's not fun and I know it is time to DNF the book. Unfortunately, the book Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite is my first DNF of 2019. I wanted so badly to enjoy this book, but it just feel short of my expectations.

It's true that contemporary isn't my favorite genre, but usually the ones I pick are amazing! I found Dear Haiti, Love Alaine on NetGalley and when I read the description I thought it sounded like an amazing story about a young teen dealing with the fallout of a poor choice on a school project and a hard topic that includes a health issue with her mother. I loved the idea that the book was about Haiti and raising voices for it, as it's very rare to find books set in Haiti.
One issue not with the writing itself but the formatting of the ebook, is that some of the paragraphs are out of order so you have to search through the recent pages to make the storyline fit. The different font colors and font styles are a bit distracting.
As for the actual story, I felt that Alaine was a solid character but her use of humor as a defense mechanism was a little bit overdone. Now I'm not sure if that was the intent of the author's, but it made it very hard for me to relate to Alaine. I loved her father and would have liked to see more of a story with him, and maybe he is more prevalent in the second half of the book. Celeste is a great character, Alaine's mom, I love that she is a news journalist and is this strong, fiery woman. Loved that Alaine was getting the chance to reconnect with her mother after an incident on Celeste's news show, and after a sad discovery, even though she was sent to Haiti as punishment for causing such an incident at school. Alaine's Tati Estelle (her Aunt) has an important role in Haiti as the Haitian Minister of Tourism and CEO of Patron Pal an app to help the poor in Haiti to make a change. Estelle has agreed to give Alaine an internship on her team in hopes that Alaine learns enough information to redo her school project to show that she's learned her lesson and now has more respect and knowledge for her country of origin. Although the constant switch of email/postcard and narration was a little hard to follow for me.
I wanted so much to like this book, and maybe once it's out in print I will give it another try, but for now I'm having to DNF it. Sorry Harlequin Teen and my apologies to the authors. Thank you so much for the chance to read Dear Haiti, Love Alaine.
Some books aren't for everyone, and that's ok! Just remember not to force yourself to read a book you aren't enjoying and that it is absolutely fine to DNF the book. On to the next read! Happy Reading!! 🤓

I had looked forward to reading this, but in the end I was very disappointed. There were problems with this novel from the very start and not just with the writing. The most noticeable was that this was evidently created as a print book and no thought whatsoever was given to the conversion to ebook. Submitting it in Amazon Kindle format was the first mistake. Amazon is renowned for trashing books when running them through its crappy kindle conversion process, and this one was a disaster. I've said this many times before and I will never tire of saying it until Amazon fixes it: unless your book is essentially plain vanilla, Amazon will trash it.

You can get away with bold fonts and italicized text, but the moment you start putting page headers in there, and drop caps, text box inserts, or any sort of special layout or formatting, and Amazon will destroy it, guaranteed. Never put images in it. Despite this being a given, no one evidently ever thinks to check if the resulting ebook is ready for Amazon Prime time. This one was not. I get that this was an advance review copy, but there is no excuse for the shoddy condition it was in. Evidently no one bothered to check it. This is on the authors and the publisher. I'm at the point now where I'm about ready to fail a book in review for something like this regardless of what else it has right or wrong about it, because I'm so very tired of seeing books in this condition having been mauled in the Amazon jungle.

It's not just a matter of the odd bit here and there having an issue. As writers, we all have to suck that up, but when a book is appallingly mashed-up by the conversion process (which is Amazon's forte as judged by the repeated problems with books I read in Kindle format), someone needs to check it and fix it before it goes out. Given that this was an ARC, there is plenty of time to fix it before it's published in September, but this is really no excuse for putting out a book for review that evidently hasn't even been so much as grammar- and spell-checked:

Here's an example: "...Twitter account I reserve for ratchetness and told them where they could shove keep their opinions." There is a spelling error and a grammatical error right there. Right after this there was a whole section turned red - that is to say a red font as opposed to black. I often see red sections in Kindle format books, usually in the end papers at the beginning - which would be the beginning papers, right? These things make me see red because there's no excuse for them. In this book though, there were random red paragraphs all over the book. I have no idea what it is in Amazon's evidently sloppy and substandard conversion process which causes these, but it would have taken only a cursory glance through the book to see that there was a serious quality problem.

Here's a grammar problem that was evidently caused by a sentence being written one way, changed to sound a little different, and then never re-read to make sure it made sense: "I said she could just show up and show out be herself." Say what? Whether this was caused or contributed to by the fact that this novel had two writers, I do not know. I have often thought it would be nice to have a co-writer, because in addition to spurring on your partner, each of you could catch the other's mistakes, but from the evidence here, it doesn't work that way!

Another example is "...they replavced her presentation with a chat about resolving disputes..." which ostensibly is an attempt to mash two words (repaved and replaced) into one! Inventive, but not good English! I rather suspect though that it was a typo, 'V' and 'C' being next-door-neighbors on the keyboard. This is why I believe a final spellcheck/grammar check was never done on this novel before it was submitted to Net Galley for us poor reviewers who merit only the ebook!

Following are a couple of examples of the poor formatting created by Kindle conversion process; in both of them, the page header and number has been meshed with the text of the novel:

The guests included the usual round
DEAR HAITI, LOVE ALAINE 21
table setup plus a congressperson or two.
This next one had both the header mesh and a red section:
"[pause]
BEAUPARLANT: Exactly. So, when the public hears rumors of expensive dinners at Zuma and court
DEAR HAITI, LOVE ALAINE 45
side Miami Heat seats on their dime..."
The portion beginning 'BEAUPARLANT' and ending with 'court' was all in blood red! And these were all in the first fifth of the novel.
When I got to around twenty percent, this red paragraph issue had become more than an aberration; it was so bad that I chose not to continue wrestling with a book that I wasn't even enjoying in the first place. I'm not a fan of experimental fiction and this felt like it. I'm not a fan of stories which are largely texting messages, or chat room exchanges or which incorporate large portions of such. I don't think it's edgy, I think it's tired and lazy writing. This book didn't go in for that so much as it went in for including the full text of emails, school event programs, transcripts, and that kind of thing. I quickly took to skipping these sections entirely and you know, it made no difference to my understanding of what was going on! So why include them? To me it's just lazy writing.

Because, I suspect, of these attempts to be cutting edge, the story became somewhat incoherent in places, and here I'm talking about what took place in the narrative flow of the text, not the parts where there were disruptive intrusions by emails and newspaper articles and so on. Skipping those parts actually made the story more coherent to me, but maybe that's just me.

The plot is about this one high-school girl, Alaine Beauparlant, a name which I thought was a bit much given she wants to be a journalist and her mother is a TV talk show host. Handsome-speaking? Really? Anyway, having been dissed in school by another girl in a very public way, Alaine reacts in kind, and gets punished for her misdemeanor while the other girl gets off scot-free. The other girl's behavior was without question outright bullying, yet she had no disciplinary action imposed on her while Alaine is suspended?! It's not authentic. Either that or Alaine attends a really, really bad school which didn't seem that way from what I read of it.

I never made it as far as Alaine's suspension. This was yet another novel set in a high-school where bullying is rampant and there is no accountability. I don't doubt that there is bullying in schools unfortunately, but reading about it in yet another YA story is getting very old, and it was only one of many tired tropes employed here. I'm also tired of stories where the girl needs to have the handsome beau, like no woman is sufficient on her own; she has to have her prince charming to validate her. This book could have done quite well without "Tati's distractingly cute intern." We need to have a #MeNeither movement to encourage writers to write about women who don't need men to get what they want out of life and get where they want to go. Maybe it should be tagged #MenOptional.

There was another disturbing issue here and this is a small spoiler, so be warned. Alaine's mother starts acting strangely very early in the story and this is apparently due to Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's usually hits late in life. Only about five percent of cases are early-onset, and sufferers don't typically become violent until late stage, and then only in extremis. While there is always room for aberrations, this story felt unrealistic in its approach to Alzheimer's, which didn't help its case with me. Just saying!

I wish the authors all the best with their career, but I could not get with, and cannot commend, this novel. It wasn't where it needed to be for my taste. If it had started with Alaine arriving in Haiti, cutting out all the high school BS that came before, it might have been be an improvement, but for me it wasn't working at all, and I chose to move on to something more engaging and more realistic.

A fantastic cover and vibrant, fun main character don't overcome the extreme all over the place story.

This book was unlike anything I have ever read.

This book is about a girl named Alaine (clearly) who lives in the US with her divorced Haitian immigrant parents. Her mother is a celebrated journalist who's sudden affliction causes a rift in Alaine's life. After a school project gone wrong, her father sends her off to Haiti where her mother and aunt live. Even though it's a punishment, she finds her two months long stay in Haiti something more than just content for her class project. She learns about her family and their history in Haiti. It's heartbreaking at times, but also uplifting in the way not only Alaine comes to understand the world around her, but also the people she loves most.

What I love about reading books like this is that I get to learn aspects and history I never knew about first hand from the author herself, through her characters. I love to be entertained and sometimes just need something to fill my time, but if I can learn a thing or two, that's a plus for me.

A few things that irked me: Although the formatting on the e-arc was a bit wonky, I did like how the book was told in emails, blog posts, etc. It was fun and kept my attention.. I also felt as though I needed more of Alaine and her mother as they navigated the curveball life had thrown at them. There were too many little things happening that it sort of took away from it.

I did enjoy reading this and gave an extra just for the cover alone.

I'm not going to lie I never heard of this book before I saw it being available to request on netgalley. The synopsis looked intriguing AF. At first I wasn't a hundred percent sure how I felt about deer Haiti but after reading the complete novel I'm glad I gave it a chance. Elaine for me was a difficult character to enjoy while I fell in love with her quick wit. I enjoyed dear Haiti Alaine for multiple reasons but my main reason is rich cultural history and culture that seep through every page.

I love that this book is written by sisters and I think it really shows throughout.
This YA novel is told in a epistolary format, which is one of my favorite styles! The book is comprised of correspondence, emails, texts, journal entries, and articles to tell the story. I think I may have been missing some images, but I don't doubt that they will be in the final version.
Our heroine, Alaine is cool, funny, and headstrong. After some drama that her Mom & Alaine get involved in they both retreat to their Mom's hometown in Haiti.
It was interesting to read about the culture of Haiti. I love books that include this in-depth cultural history.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the this ARC. I can't wait to see the final copy when it comes out in September

Nothing says a strong, heroine voice like Alaine. She's young, she's exceptional, and she's willing to do the impossible for those she loves. Her story made me laugh as much as it hurt, covering topics from poverty to Alzheimer's to racism, and I couldn't think of a better protagonist to share that story than Alaine. She's a troublemaker and she's smart, just like the other strong women throughout the novel. On top of all the heavy topics that this novel covers, we are also given insight into Haiti, from its highs and lows to its beauty and wreckage. Haiti is given life within this novel, and the country is as lively as its people and these characters. This book is a wonderful read for most ages, and absolutely difficult to put down. Jam-packed with cultural significance and coming of age, Alaine's story and lessons are not ones to miss out on.

First of all, I love that this book was written by sisters. Their author's note says a lot about their relationship, and it is clear that they enjoyed writing it together. Kudos on that!
I thoroughly enjoyed Alaine's story. Her voice is fresh and entertaining, a mix of serious, sarcastic, and humorous. I found the aspects of Haitian life and culture fascinating, as this is a part of the world I know little about. I appreciate that the authors did not ignore the disparities that exist in Haiti, such as that between wealth and poverty. The story kept me guessing until the end, which is always a plus. After taking awhile to get started, once I got into the story I found it difficult to put down. All in all, a great read.

This week I read Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by sisters Maika Moulie and Martiza Moulite .
This YA novel is told in a epistolary format, which is one of my favorite styles. This means the book is comprised of correspondence, emails, texts, journal entries, and articles to tell the story. Our heroine is Alaine and she is cool, funny and headstrong. She lives with her father, and occasionally shares phone calls with her mother, who is a world-famous journalist with a cable news show. Well, her Mom gets involved in a scandal, and she acts out at school and they both retreat to their Mom's hometown in Haiti. All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was interesting to read about the culture of Haiti that is separated from the depressing news stories we get all the time. I believe this book comes out in Fall 2019, and I hope they put a little more work into the blurb. Once you get deep into this story there is some family drama, assault, generational curses, blood magic and a lot of other stuff going on. I was reading it thinking..What is going on here?! I thought it was going to be a simple girl on vacation, repairs some family stuff and, find a lil love type story....and it turned out to be a very intense read. One thing I really enjoyed in this book was a conversation about what charity from the U.S. does to an island like Haiti. They explore the good and the bad of the issue, and I rarely hear these types of discussions occurring in fiction, especially YA book. So, if you're looking for an intense family drama with some humor strewn throughout then I'd recommend this book for you. Oh! And how could I not mention this amazing cover?! It's absolutely gorgeous!

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a complimentary arc of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite in exchange for my honest review.*

This book was so, so sweet. It was funny and honest and such a cool concept. There was assignments, pictures, journals, letters. texts, and articles all throughout the book to tell parts of the story, which I loved and think is a fun way to get younger teens or new readers introduced to the book. However, in this ARC, most were missing so it made it little confusing, but I’m sure the final copy covers it all.

I LOVED The mother/daughter dynamic in this. It wasn’t a typical one and it showed what it’s like to look up to your mother, but not really know her. I was so happy to see a dad who is the primary caregiver and their beautiful relationship. The parents played such a big role and I thought it was so important.

This story shows the girl in high school who is super determined and “ready for the future”. I was this girl and I knew many like this, who think they have it all planned out. Which is super nice for all the young teens who know their passions already.

Sometimes it was hard to know what some people looked like, there wasn’t much character descriptions (which is more of a personal preference).

I loved the influence of family, curses, the question of home and place. This was such a beautiful love story to Haiti and culture and family and home. I loved it. (Also I just wanna know if Jules and Celeste get back together...)

Just some internal screaming:

•Celeste’s journal entries are MY FAVORITE

•BABY JULES AND CELESTE

[this review will be up on my blog, acquadimore.wordpress.com, on April 18, 2019]

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is a contemporary novel following a girl who is the daughter of divorced Haitian immigrants living in the US, and it's set both in the United States and in Haiti.

I am always looking for novels set outside the US, especially ones written by authors who have lived there or have ties with the country they're writing about, because American books, despite being read (translated and not) worldwide, always prioritize the white American perspective. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine was exactly what I wanted: it's a story about a girl who is the daughter of immigrants as she visits Haiti for the first time and meets the rest of her family, learns more about her family history, and also gets to know both Haiti and her mother more. This book shows Haiti as a place that isn't a stereotype, but a country with its own history, culture, flaws and good aspects.

What stood out to me about this book first was Alaine herself. I loved her narrative voice, the way she uses humor to connect with people and to protect herself at the same time, and I could feel her passion for journalism. And she grows so much during this novel!
I also really liked reading about her relationship with her mother, who has been distant for most of Alaine's life, and who has now been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. The way Alaine tries to deal with that felt very realistic to me, and it was heartbreaking at times.

My feelings on the mixed media format are less positive. On one hand, I loved that this was told through diary entries, parts of school projects, tweets, blog posts and emails. On the other hand, the poor formatting of the eARC meant that at times these were either unreadable or missing.

Another thing that didn't work for me as much as I hoped was the plot. I would have loved this book more had it focused mostly on Alaine and her mother's relationship, but it didn't - there are a lot of side and minor characters (so many that "who is that again" is a reaction I had multiple times during this book) and a lot of side plots, involving embezzlement, a maybe-romance, and a family curse. I also felt that some characters that were relevant in the first half of the novel were barely there in the second, like Alaine's dad (and I liked reading about him), or Alaine's friend, who completely disappears.

Overall, I do recommend this, but I think it's the kind of novel that works better in physical form.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. The opinions in this review are mine.

I really wanted to love this book. It’s about a young girl in Miami descended from Haitian royalty. Her father is a psychiatrist and her mother is a leading journalist. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her father while her mom is making a name for herself.

The premise of the story is good. She has never been to Haiti, has a poor relationship with her mother, but idolizes her and wants to follow in her footsteps career-wise. Then her mother has a meltdown on live television and she is treated horribly by her classmates and their parents. Acts out, and winds up having to go to Haiti to do a school project, find out more about her history, reconnect and try to come to grips with whats going on with her mom and help out with a charity project that her aunt is involved in. And while shes there there’s a cute boy she’s interested in.

There were way too many storylines in this book to hold my attention. Between the emails, texts, graphs, and the little teenagey comments trying to be funny throughout, it was hard to focus on the point of the story.

It was an exhausting read. I wished that half the emails/letters and texts weren’t in there. I felt like I was constantly trying to reorient myself as a reader. Is this an email to her friend,coworker, dad? Is this an old letter between sisters? Is this a conversation on the phone? A text message?
Is this a memory?

I think the storyline of a mother that is basically estranged from her teenaged daughter and having a meltdown on television while all her classmates watched was enough for strong plot. The fact that the meltdown was caused by early aggressive Alzheimers is also extremely interesting. The fact the mom and daughter are reconnecting in Haiti was amazing. This book fell apart for me when it added all the extra storylines weaved within.

I loved this book. Smart. Refreshing. New. Alaine, the main character, is intelligent and witty. A role model for many girls today. Sure, she deals with an embarrassing and televised incident, but, she gets through it with style and grace.

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.