Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
I think due to its epistolary format, I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd read it in print instead of listened to the audiobook. It had a lot of great qualities including strong female characters who were flawed. I loved that it was set in Haiti featuring a main character of Haitian descent who was visiting Haiti for the first time. Many of the characters made mistakes and needed to reconcile their behavior, which created a lot of opportunity for positive messaging.
Good book. Would recommend.
Good book. Would recommend.
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I would give this 3 1/2 stars if I could. I enjoyed the story very much, and loved the location being mostly in Haiti, but there were holes in the plot that left me feeling unsatisfied at the end.
This pains to be to give this book only 2 stars because I so desperately wanted to love this book. Before I get into the review, I do want to say that the authors are beautiful and amazing Haitian women and I'm thankful that we are finally getting our stories told.
In terms of this book, I was sadly disappointed in just how the story unfolded. You first meet Alaine who is quirky, quick-witted, sarcastic, independent and headstrong. She's the type of girl to use humor to get around uncomfortable conversations and situations, while I tried my hardest to both connect with her and see myself in her, I really couldn't. She came across as immature sometimes in dealing with situations such as the big incident that affects her mother. As I was reading it, some signs were evident that something was wrong with her mother and it was a bit concerning, but instead, Alaine was very childish in her approach. I'm not sure if it's based on her mother not being around due to her highly demanding career but it wasn't something that was thoroughly fleshed out.
The plot wasn't compelling to me either. While there's a story surrounding a family curse that Alaine decides to uncover and break in some way, you learn that there's no way to confirm if the curse was real or not. Granted in Haitian culture, voodoo and curses are real and I don't want to make light of that, but the way the story behind the curse and breaking it unfolded, it was all over the place. I would have liked if this story was in the form of a flashback in terms of one chapter being from Alaine's perspective in the present time and other chapter's in her mother, Celeste's perspective leading up to Alaine deciding to do what needs to be done to break the curse. This would then allow you to put the pieces together, whereas I felt like I had to go back and forth to remember certain things and put certain pieces together.
Lastly, I do have to say that I was hoping to resonate with Alaine a lot more as a Haitian-American female, in terms of cultural norms. This was the first book that I was looking forward to seeing myself in, but that wasn't the case. Even when set in Haiti, Alaine seemed removed to a certain degree from the Haitian lifestyle, there are just cultural norms that take place in the Haitian community, household and in Haiti in general that I felt weren't reflected. Things like blackouts, Tap-Taps, dealing with nosey Haitian relatives or the three Ls: Lecole, L'eglise, Lakaye (School, Church, and Home). While these things may seem trivial, these are things that seem to connect Haitians together no matter where you grew up. At times I felt like Alaine's best friend Tatiana was more Haitian than her. I do understand that this book is intended to reach out to non-Haitian readers and introduce to Haiti and Haitian culture in a different light, but I just felt like it was missing the epis (seasoning) to bring everything together and so I rated it with 2 stars.
In terms of this book, I was sadly disappointed in just how the story unfolded. You first meet Alaine who is quirky, quick-witted, sarcastic, independent and headstrong. She's the type of girl to use humor to get around uncomfortable conversations and situations, while I tried my hardest to both connect with her and see myself in her, I really couldn't. She came across as immature sometimes in dealing with situations such as the big incident that affects her mother. As I was reading it, some signs were evident that something was wrong with her mother and it was a bit concerning, but instead, Alaine was very childish in her approach. I'm not sure if it's based on her mother not being around due to her highly demanding career but it wasn't something that was thoroughly fleshed out.
The plot wasn't compelling to me either. While there's a story surrounding a family curse that Alaine decides to uncover and break in some way, you learn that there's no way to confirm if the curse was real or not. Granted in Haitian culture, voodoo and curses are real and I don't want to make light of that, but the way the story behind the curse and breaking it unfolded, it was all over the place. I would have liked if this story was in the form of a flashback in terms of one chapter being from Alaine's perspective in the present time and other chapter's in her mother, Celeste's perspective leading up to Alaine deciding to do what needs to be done to break the curse. This would then allow you to put the pieces together, whereas I felt like I had to go back and forth to remember certain things and put certain pieces together.
Lastly, I do have to say that I was hoping to resonate with Alaine a lot more as a Haitian-American female, in terms of cultural norms. This was the first book that I was looking forward to seeing myself in, but that wasn't the case. Even when set in Haiti, Alaine seemed removed to a certain degree from the Haitian lifestyle, there are just cultural norms that take place in the Haitian community, household and in Haiti in general that I felt weren't reflected. Things like blackouts, Tap-Taps, dealing with nosey Haitian relatives or the three Ls: Lecole, L'eglise, Lakaye (School, Church, and Home). While these things may seem trivial, these are things that seem to connect Haitians together no matter where you grew up. At times I felt like Alaine's best friend Tatiana was more Haitian than her. I do understand that this book is intended to reach out to non-Haitian readers and introduce to Haiti and Haitian culture in a different light, but I just felt like it was missing the epis (seasoning) to bring everything together and so I rated it with 2 stars.
My favorite part about this book was the narrator. Her wit and sass definitely spiced up the story line. Overall a quick read. A little bit of magic, a little bit of romance and a lot of family drama and soul.
I learned so much about Haiti from this book but the narrative left me wanting more...and less. There were parts that I really felt like I was missing important pieces of and others where there was just too much noise.
I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
"Dear Haiti, Love Alaine" follows seventeen-year-old Haitian American Alaine. Alaine lives in Miami with her father and has a famous mother who is a reporter living in Washington, D.C. Alaine is what I think most people would call "too much." She is definitely intelligent and it seems holds some pain over the fact that her mother is barely around due to her job and late breaking stories. Her actions in this book made my head hurt. She does a prank to get back at someone and almost ends up killing another classmate. She gets suspended although she was initially threatened with being expelled. As a way to make amends at her school she is supposed to do an assignment on her family's history in Haiti.
So Alaine was aggravating. She ends up going back to Haiti to stay with her aunt and mother for two months and learns barely anything I think about the history of the country. Instead this book focuses on her mother and aunt's history, a cousin with her own messed up sense of values, and curses. I think that if the authors had just focused on Alaine that would have worked better. I really wish that we had Alaine exploring Haiti and finding out about the history of the country. She works at her aunt's foundation and is crushing on an intern. They have a lot of IMs and texts to each other and she just stumbles on information about her family by people just giving her that information.
I can't say much about the secondary characters because they barely matter in this book. Alaine's father is written so weird as is the mother. We know that they both came from Haiti, but we don't get into why they got divorced. And the authors try to throw a little out there about why Alaine's mother had her go live with her father full-time but it made zero sense and then you throw in family curses and I just didn't care anymore. Due to the writing style we flip flop all over the place and you can barely focus on anyone.
The writing style was not for me. The authors decided to tell this story via Alaine's online journal I think and also included excerpts from her mother's diary, letters between her aunt, mother, texts, newspaper articles, etc. I felt like I was being stuffed with information and not a lot of it made sense. Also certain words or whole paragraphs here and there were in red. Also sometimes the fonts would be really big and then change all over the place. I have no idea why that was and I hope that's just a weird formatting issue with my ARC and is not going to be issued like this. I get why "House of Leaves" did certain things to make the book more immersive for readers. This book is not "House of Leaves."
The book mainly takes place in Miami and Haiti. You don't get a sense of Miami at all and the authors take more care to describe Haiti. I am disappointed though that I am still left with not knowing much about Haiti besides two women's names who kept getting mentioned: Marie-Madeline Lachenais and Marie-Louise Coidavid. I really wish the authors had gone into more of its history and how the country had changed through the centuries when under Spanish, French, and American rule. I also wanted to hear more about how the people in the country spoke French as well as Creole. I was fascinated by that and it was just thrown here and there as an aside.
The ending was a mess. I don't want to get into it, but good grief I don't know what the authors were aiming for in this story. Curses are real?
"Dear Haiti, Love Alaine" follows seventeen-year-old Haitian American Alaine. Alaine lives in Miami with her father and has a famous mother who is a reporter living in Washington, D.C. Alaine is what I think most people would call "too much." She is definitely intelligent and it seems holds some pain over the fact that her mother is barely around due to her job and late breaking stories. Her actions in this book made my head hurt. She does a prank to get back at someone and almost ends up killing another classmate. She gets suspended although she was initially threatened with being expelled. As a way to make amends at her school she is supposed to do an assignment on her family's history in Haiti.
So Alaine was aggravating. She ends up going back to Haiti to stay with her aunt and mother for two months and learns barely anything I think about the history of the country. Instead this book focuses on her mother and aunt's history, a cousin with her own messed up sense of values, and curses. I think that if the authors had just focused on Alaine that would have worked better. I really wish that we had Alaine exploring Haiti and finding out about the history of the country. She works at her aunt's foundation and is crushing on an intern. They have a lot of IMs and texts to each other and she just stumbles on information about her family by people just giving her that information.
I can't say much about the secondary characters because they barely matter in this book. Alaine's father is written so weird as is the mother. We know that they both came from Haiti, but we don't get into why they got divorced. And the authors try to throw a little out there about why Alaine's mother had her go live with her father full-time but it made zero sense and then you throw in family curses and I just didn't care anymore. Due to the writing style we flip flop all over the place and you can barely focus on anyone.
The writing style was not for me. The authors decided to tell this story via Alaine's online journal I think and also included excerpts from her mother's diary, letters between her aunt, mother, texts, newspaper articles, etc. I felt like I was being stuffed with information and not a lot of it made sense. Also certain words or whole paragraphs here and there were in red. Also sometimes the fonts would be really big and then change all over the place. I have no idea why that was and I hope that's just a weird formatting issue with my ARC and is not going to be issued like this. I get why "House of Leaves" did certain things to make the book more immersive for readers. This book is not "House of Leaves."
The book mainly takes place in Miami and Haiti. You don't get a sense of Miami at all and the authors take more care to describe Haiti. I am disappointed though that I am still left with not knowing much about Haiti besides two women's names who kept getting mentioned: Marie-Madeline Lachenais and Marie-Louise Coidavid. I really wish the authors had gone into more of its history and how the country had changed through the centuries when under Spanish, French, and American rule. I also wanted to hear more about how the people in the country spoke French as well as Creole. I was fascinated by that and it was just thrown here and there as an aside.
The ending was a mess. I don't want to get into it, but good grief I don't know what the authors were aiming for in this story. Curses are real?
This book took me surprise and I loved every second of it. It’s incredibly informative and fun and the fact that it’s an own voices book makes it 10x better! Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is about a Haitian girl who informs us all about the beauties and struggles of her country and family (and it may involve a curse XD .)
Overview:
Alaine Beauparlant is the daughter of two very amazingly talented incredible human beings, which of course means she, at the very least, is going to be talented and amazing as well. She is incredibly smart and ends up doing something at school that is … not so smart lol. While at the same time her mother sort of screws up her career and has to take a trip back to her home, Haiti. Not too long after this happens to her mom, Alaine messes up at school and her dad makes her go live with her mom in Haiti but tries to cover it up as a school project.
While being in Haiti, she realizes that a lot is going on with her mother as well as going on with her country. She is staying with her Tati Estelle who is taking care of her mother and her, and who is also running an app that helps Haitian Children in need.
This book teaches you so much about Haiti, its culture, and its beautiful people. I seriously took in so much information in such a little amount of time but it’s done so well because it’s woven into a wonderful story, that is at times, hilarious yet emotional and heartbreaking. All the elements to an amazing story are included in this book which makes it so easy to fall in love with.
What I Loved:
There’s only one thing about this that I didn’t necessarily love and that was at times the story felt a tad jumbled and rushed but seriously it is a minor complaint. Now what truly made me fly through this book and connect so well is because it’s told in emails and documents which is my fave! I think you can tell so much more about a person in the way they text or write an email, or just conduct themselves on social platforms. I loved this because not only is it in digital correspondence, it’s also in real-time ?? I guess is how you would put it ?? So we get to see Alaine just living her life in Haiti, while at the same time reading about history and culture that she was writing about in school because of the digital aspect to the book lol.
I feel like I’m not really explaining this like I want to but I 100% recommend this book to everyone because it’s OwnVoices, it’s beautiful, and it’s extremely informative.
It comes out on September Third so don’t forget to pick this up once it releases!
Hope y’all have a great day/night and Happy Reading!
~ Sol
Overview:
Alaine Beauparlant is the daughter of two very amazingly talented incredible human beings, which of course means she, at the very least, is going to be talented and amazing as well. She is incredibly smart and ends up doing something at school that is … not so smart lol. While at the same time her mother sort of screws up her career and has to take a trip back to her home, Haiti. Not too long after this happens to her mom, Alaine messes up at school and her dad makes her go live with her mom in Haiti but tries to cover it up as a school project.
While being in Haiti, she realizes that a lot is going on with her mother as well as going on with her country. She is staying with her Tati Estelle who is taking care of her mother and her, and who is also running an app that helps Haitian Children in need.
This book teaches you so much about Haiti, its culture, and its beautiful people. I seriously took in so much information in such a little amount of time but it’s done so well because it’s woven into a wonderful story, that is at times, hilarious yet emotional and heartbreaking. All the elements to an amazing story are included in this book which makes it so easy to fall in love with.
What I Loved:
There’s only one thing about this that I didn’t necessarily love and that was at times the story felt a tad jumbled and rushed but seriously it is a minor complaint. Now what truly made me fly through this book and connect so well is because it’s told in emails and documents which is my fave! I think you can tell so much more about a person in the way they text or write an email, or just conduct themselves on social platforms. I loved this because not only is it in digital correspondence, it’s also in real-time ?? I guess is how you would put it ?? So we get to see Alaine just living her life in Haiti, while at the same time reading about history and culture that she was writing about in school because of the digital aspect to the book lol.
I feel like I’m not really explaining this like I want to but I 100% recommend this book to everyone because it’s OwnVoices, it’s beautiful, and it’s extremely informative.
It comes out on September Third so don’t forget to pick this up once it releases!
Hope y’all have a great day/night and Happy Reading!
~ Sol