Posted to Youtube: Alaine Beauparlant is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her parents have built a good life for themselves and their daughter in the United States but everything starts to change when Alaine's mother has an incident on her national political talkshow. Alaine acts out in school and as punishment is sent to stay with her mother's family in Haiti. Alaine finds herself ensconced in her family's history as he learns about not only her family but also the country her parents once called home.

This book was a pleasant surprise. The book is richly crafted with strong characters and well developed plot. The book had several great messages that were well camaflouged in an entertaining narrative with a hilariously strong main character. This is the authors first book and I will happily keep reading anything they release.

Thank you to Netgalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings are my own.

I really enjoyed this novel!

I loved seeing the Haitian culture and beliefs. I loved the inclusion of voodoo and French/Creole languages! It’s written in Epistolary style, which I love! It was a super quick read.

I did feel the ending was rushed. There was so much going on, it felt like they tried to tie everything up in a couple chapters. I was left wondering what happened to a few characters.

There were so many things to love about this book. I had some trepidation going in, knowing it was going to be mixed media (I had a bad experience recently with another book), but those emails, news accounts, hand-written journal entries, all served a purpose and moved the narrative forward. I enjoyed learning what was included about the Haitian Revolution and the history of Haiti itself, something I know nothing about. I liked that Alaine, who started out a little, I don't know, self-righteous?, and very opinionated, was really allowed to grow and evolve as the story went on. She allowed herself to open up to the experiences of others, to her culture. This book is not what I expected, but in a good way. It tackles a lot: sexual assault, terminal illness, bullying, the dynamics of a family with divorced parents, poverty, and cultural identity. I feel like it addresses these topics well. There are a couple little twists in the last quarter of the book that made getting to the end even more fun.

Reading the eARC was a little difficult, as sometimes sentences would just disappear midway, some text would be red for no reason, and some of the mixed media formatting didn't come through well. I'm sure those are all issues that aren't present in a hard copy, but it did make reading difficult on occasion.

First things first I love this cover so much!
Alaine has been sent to Haiti after a school presentation/prank gone wrong. Throughout this story we are introduced to different characters and to be honest it was a little overwhelming at times. The story would also flip from journal entries, emails, text messages, postcards and I found it made the story choppy and hard for me to connect to the story. I have read over 200 pages of this book so far and I’m not really sure what is going on plot wise besides the “insert spoiler”. As much as I wanted to love this book, I had to sadly bow out gracefully and dnf this story. Just because I didn’t enjoy the book please don’t let my review stop you from reading.

Update:
This book wouldn’t leave me alone so I decided to pick it up again. I have to say I’m glad I did! I ended up enjoying the second half of the book way better, I felt the writing was better and everything I read prior started to connect and make more sense. So this ended up being a nice read that made me happy.

Dear Alaine, Love Haiti was one of my most anticipated releases of 2019, but I felt some trepidation because of mixed reviews and the writing style. Going into the story, I thought I wouldn’t care much about the characters because of the writing style, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Alaine is a first-generation Haitian American from a wealthy family. She’s intelligent, sarcastic, and quick-witted. She gets in trouble often because she’s slightly impulsive, but that’s kind of expected at 17. Although parts of her family background are an alternate version of history, it warmed my heart to read a generational story about family and powerful Haitian women. I loved the side characters, the pieces of Haitian culture that were mentioned, the way the authors weaved Haitian history into the story, and their use Haitian Creole throughout the novel. My nostalgic little heart did backflips seeing mentions of I Love You Anne, Tonton Bicha, and konpa on page. That truly made me feel represented.

That said, there are few things I wished the book handled differently:

1. There were far too many side plots
2. The beginning of the book alludes to Alaine’s struggle to fit into either culture as a Haitian American, but the book doesn’t circle back to that. Would’ve been interesting to see if time in Haiti helped her find a middle ground 
3. I had no problem with the family curse, but it took over the second half of the book in a way I wasn’t expecting. I wish more time was spent developing Alaine’s relationship with her mother instead.
4. There’s a lot commentary on social issues, but the book kind of danced around elitism and social class in Haiti.
5. I didn’t love the epistolary style for this story.

Other than those things, Dear Haiti is a solid debut that accomplished exactly what the authors set out to do—show another side of Haiti most people aren’t familiar with. I’m very happy to have read a magical realism book with a Haitian MC and I look forward to reading more books from the Moulite sisters. I hope there’s something in the works for Alaine’s best friend, Tatiana.

Would recommend this to fans of Ibi Zoboi, readers who also enjoyed Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno, and anyone who’s in the mood for magical realism stepped in Haitian culture and mysticism, familial responsibility, fierce female characters, and pop culture references.

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine was a super fun summer read that honestly reminded me of epistle type books as a young teen. We follow Alaine’s mishaps through her journal entries, school project notes, letters, and saved articles. Her voice throughout the novel is engaging and over the top in a way only a teen girl can pull off. It was spectacular. When she starts delving into her family’s past and gets caught up in a bit of political scandal mixed with voodoo curses the book gets a bit confusing. Due to the limitations of the format the events began to run together and never really seemed to get unpacked. The character voice, relationships and descriptions of the settings were amazing. The e-ARC formatting was done rather poorly with paragraphs running together, paragraphs split up and mixed up, and random red text throughtout.

I loved the story. It was inspiring, and something I feel like a lot of people should read. But I didn't love the writing style or the way the story was told. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was in a traditional format.

Thank you #NetGalley for an early copy of #DearHaitiLoveAlaine for review!

Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Teen for providing me an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I read about 25% of this book. I stopped around that point not because it wasn't good, but because it was just not for me. I wasn't connecting with Alaine, mostly due to her Gen Z teenage attitude - I find very difficult to understand the behaviors and honestly even the speech of her generation.
I think that this book, and its concept, are a refreshing addition to the YA canon and I recommend it for teens or regular readers of YA.

Happy Release day to the Moulite Sisters!

I had the best of times reading Dear Haiti, Love Alaine. This book was a fresh new voice and a fun approach to discovering our cultural identity and roots.

By now, its been already discussed so I won't spoil what the 'incident' is about, but what happens to Elaine afterwards turns out to be the adventure of a lifetime.

I want to focus this on the writing style: thru the various narrative styles, and the simplicity of how quickly you can read this story. Alaine takes us to a journey thru Haiti to live with her mom after her dad basically tells her she has to and tries covering it as a school assignment, but what is won thru this journey is the knowledge that another life exists outside the confines of your comfort zone, your home. Haiti as we can learn is a beautiful place full of diversity, not at all like people picture it. Alaine shows u a different side of the island, the people, the beauty and the diversity. The story is rich in everything you would want to find in a YA fiction.
Thank you so much to the publisher for allowing me to read this fantastic story.

I had really high hopes for this novel! However it fell short for me. I am an avid YA Genre reader but Alaine's character just seemed bratty to me. I also had a hard time staying engaged with the way the story was told through emails, and in the style of her report. I think the concept was different and great but I had to force myself to get through. When she finds out her mothers condition, I felt bad for the character but I felt her nature and actions didn't really change. I did not see much character growth and the events were anticlimactic for me.

Unfortunately there were technical difficulties that made it difficult for me to read this book--pages would simply disappear before I could read them, and I could not find them by flipping forward and backward through the novel. What I was able to read I enjoyed very much--the writing is very good and the story is compelling. However, I had to stop reading after only a few chapters, due to the fact that chunks of the story disappeared.

Alaine is a smart, witty, outspoken 17-year-old Haitian-American teen living in Miami with her father. Her mother, a high-profile cable news journalist, has an on-air meltdown that puts Alaine in the crosshairs of the mean girls at school; she retaliates with a school project that goes sideways. Her psychiatrist father intervenes and comes up with an appropriate "punishment" for Alaine: she must spend two months volunteering with her Tati Estelle's startup fundraising app in Haiti. Alaine's mother is already there, spending time pulling herself together after events leading up to the on-air breakdown. As Alaine spends more time in Haiti, the burgeoning journalism student discovers her love for Haiti and its history, and stumbles onto family secrets and a situation with her aunt's organization that's sending up red flags.

Told through e-mails, postcards, journal entries, and in Alaine's voice, Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is an unputdownable look at Haiti, its history, and its people, all wreathed in magical realism tied into the heart of the country. Alaine's voice is strong and clear; she's dealing with a seemingly nonstop onslaught of feelings and stressors and works through them all as they come. She desperately wants to improve the relationship between herself and her high-powered, emotionally distant mother, but sometimes, she isn't even sure where to begin. She's as confused by her aunt as she adores her. And does she dare explore a relationship with the fellow intern in her aunt's Patron Pal startup? (Hint: Uh, YEAH.) There's never a lull in the storytelling here, which will endear readers to Alaine and her family, and inspire an interest in learning more about Haiti's rich, yet troubled, history.

If this is the debut for sisters Maika Moulike and Maritza Moulike, I can't wait to see what's next. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine has starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist.

Title: Dear Haiti, Love Alaine
Author: Maika and Maritza Moulite
Genre: YA
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Seventeen-year-old Alaine Beauparlant knows exactly what she wants to do with her life: follow in her famous mother’s journalist footsteps. She loves her dad—who’s been there for her through everything since her parents’ divorce—but journalism has her heart. And clearly her mother’s, since she never has time for Alaine.

Then her mother loses it on TV, and in the aftermath, Alaine has “the incident.” She knows she crossed the line, but she’s just grateful she gets to finish the year doing an “immersion project” in Haiti, working for her aunt and getting to spend some time with her mom. Learning about her heritage is great—until she discovers the family curse and realizes her family will never truly heal unless all the secrets are brought to light.

I have approximately zero in common with Alaine on the surface—my parents are still married, there’s no family curse I’m aware of, and I’m unlikely to let my temper make a public spectacle—but I did relate to her so much. She has these huge dreams and the drive to realize them, but she must deal with her issues and embrace who she is before she can reach for her dreams. She’s a vibrant, sympathetic character, and I loved learning about the culture and history of Haiti along with her.

Maika and Maritza Moulite are the daughters of Haitian immigrants. One has an MBA, the other a master’s in journalism. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is their new novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I LOVED this book. Alaine is an amazing character. I really enjoyed her personality, her passion, and her determination. The descriptions and the settings were just so amazing and i could see them so clearly in my head. Throw in some mysticism and curses? Yes, please. This was such an excellent read. I also loved finding out from the authors’ note that it was written by two sisters.

I've always been interested in Haitian culture, so this YA title caught my eye immediately. It was a fun and educational read. I instantly liked Alaine and enjoyed her "voice." The authors cover so many important, contemporary issues (the immigrant experience, having a working mom, etc.) in this novel, but they are handled well and the reader doesn't get bogged down. I hope that this book gets teens interested in Haiti and maybe they'll try other authors like Edwidge Danticat. Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reader copy!

This is a an important and enjoyable story told in a mixed-media format and taking place in Haiti. It infused culture into a familial contemporary, with a dash of magic, mystery, and romance. At once heartbreaking and healing, it’s everything I could have wanted in a book.

This debut novel is written by sisters Maika and Martiza Moulite. The writing style is unique as the whole story is told through letters, text and diary entries. Alaine's voice was fresh and authentic as a girl who's senior project goes terribly wrong and causes her to be suspended from school. Her parents, who are divorced, decide to send her to her mother's native Haiti. For the first time in her life Alaine spends time with her very absent celebrity mom who is in the middle of a career and health crisis. She is experiencing Haiti for the first time and uncovering some deep dark family secrets including the possibility of a family curse. And if that's not enough, she has a crush ton to her aunt's intern. I really enjoyed her constant flow of thoughts and communication throughout the book. It allowed me to get to know her and feel what she was going through. Alaine was smart, funny and wise beyond her years. I did feel at times that the story was going in many directions with almost too much going on but the story did tie together nicely at the end.

I wish I liked Dear Haiti, Love Alaine, but it was a hard book for me to get through, and I ended up not liking it.

It's told in a mixed media format, so you see news articles, emails, texts, transcripts, and diary entries from both Alaine and her family.  That didn't work at all in an e-book format.  It just didn't look great, but keep in mind I was reading an advance copy, so I'm pretty sure it'll look better once it's actually published.

I did have a hard time getting through the book, and part of it is that the mixed media form of story-telling didn't work in an e-book form.  A few parts of the text were out of order, and it's hard to have a good flow when you start a new section or chapter in the middle of a sentence.  Again, I'm sure that will be fixed by the the time the book actually comes out, but it did affect my reading experience.

Part of why I struggled with the book was the random tangents.  We'd be reading things from Alaine's point of view, and then suddenly, we'd be getting imagined emails between her mom and someone at GNN, where her mom used to work, or diary entries on a centuries old family curse.  Even though everything did tie together in the end, it didn't make sense for most of the book.  I did finish the book wondering what it was supposed to be about.  There's a lot going on, and while I did like the individual pieces, I don't know that I liked all of them together.  I felt like it muddled the overall story to the point that I wasn't sure what the story was supposed to be about.

I did like the family relationships, and that was something I did like about the book.  You don't really see that in YA, and it was really refreshing to read.  It was nice to see how they developed and changed over time but I wish we saw more of it.

Alaine had a really strong voice, and I wish we saw more of it.  It did take a backseat to some of the other things we see in the book, and I'm a little sad about that because I felt like it took away from her story.

My Rating: 1 star.  I really wish I liked this book more, but it just didn't work for me.  I think it would work great in physical form, but as a digital ARC, it was hard to get through.  There were parts of the book I liked, but it wasn't enough for me to really get into the book.

3.5 stars
I have complex feelings about this book. On one hand, as a Haitian American myself, I loved reading about a Haitian American teenage girl and watching her experience Haiti for the first time. Even though it obviously didn't exactly mimic my experience as Alaine was literally rich and almost Haitian royalty. I also really enjoyed the little sprinkling of Haitian history we get, and the socio-political commentary. On the other hand this book included some *magical* ? things that I did not love, and as that was brought up and ended up being the catalyst for a bunch of things it wasn't really easily ignored.

Characters: Alaine was such a fun character to read from. She was funny, refreshing, and #relatable. I loved her commentary on what was going on in her life and the things she ended up reading. I really liked her relationship with her dad, and her relationship with her very often absent mom felt realistic. Especially considering what her mom ends up dealing with. I also really liked seeing her close relationship with her Aunt. I wasn't a huge fan of the love interest just because I felt he was unneccessary, but there was nothing particularly wrong with his character. However, I felt like Tatiana, Alaine's supposed best friend could've been fleshed out more. She literally disappears like halfway through the book (which is explained away but it felt like a cop out). It honestly didn't seem like Alaine had any other friends either which I found odd.

Plot: The incorporation of "a curse" into the story line Really Bothered me. Especially when the breaking of said curse was really believed to potentially cure Alzheimer's?? I really wish this story had just been about Alaine coming to terms with her mom's illness in a different way. I really liked the moments where Alaine deals with it especially when she's having conversations with her mom and wish there had been more of that. I think I would've been able to let it go if the curse hadn't been "broken" the way it was. It felt like it came out of left field and was added for shock value which I wasn't a fan of. (view spoiler) Without that part I think I would've given this the full 4 stars.

Overall: I appreciated this book, and what it can hopefully do for Haitian American teens in allowing them to see themselves. There's definitely something powerful in seeing phrases you hear at home and mentions of foods you grew up with written down. But in the end I wasn't a huge fan of the plot device that propelled the story.

I truly loved this book!!!

After a school project goes very, VERY wrong, Alaine's father saves her from expulsion - on the condition that she spends the next two months in Haiti with her mother and aunt, working on a "spring volunteer immersion project" that will replace the disaster that was her first project. Alaine's journal entries document her family troubles, her work for her aunt's nonprofit, details about a family curse that her mother never let her know the details of in the past, and a cute intern! Maybe Haiti won't be such a punishment after all.

I completely loved the way this story was put together! It flowed so well, and Alaine's personality and wit had me charmed from the start! Everyone in the story just felt so real; you can totally imagine this happening in real life. I enjoyed reading a story set in Haiti; that isn't a setting you often see and I believe it was very well done! Over all, a 5/5 from me on this story, and I am so looking forward to reading more from these authors!