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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Charming protagonist with some odd elements that don’t always connect. But still delightful.
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is the debut novel for sisters Maika and Maritza Moulite. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.
Alaine is your average 17 year old high school student trying to navigate life with her divorced parents, her family in Haiti and everything else that comes along with being in high school. When she uses a school presentation as an act of revenge on a classmate, everything comes to a screeching halt and she gets sent to Haiti for a two month volunteer experience rather than being expelled.
Told in emails, diary entries and from the mouth of Alaine herself, Dear Haiti starts out super strong. Up until the minute Alaine travels to Haiti, this book was a solid four star for me. The humor and warmth and over all down to earthness (I can make up words if I want) were perfection. Unfortunately, for me, once the story moved to the next part, I felt the story started to fall apart a bit. While I appreciate everything at work here, I found it hard to keep up. This may be due, in part, to the quality of the ARC I received. A lot of sentences were out of place and I had a hard time tracking what was going on. In the long run, however, I just feel that the story tried to do too much and would have been better had it been narrower in focus.
I still enjoyed the story and rated it 3 out of 5 stars. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine comes out September 2019.
Alaine is your average 17 year old high school student trying to navigate life with her divorced parents, her family in Haiti and everything else that comes along with being in high school. When she uses a school presentation as an act of revenge on a classmate, everything comes to a screeching halt and she gets sent to Haiti for a two month volunteer experience rather than being expelled.
Told in emails, diary entries and from the mouth of Alaine herself, Dear Haiti starts out super strong. Up until the minute Alaine travels to Haiti, this book was a solid four star for me. The humor and warmth and over all down to earthness (I can make up words if I want) were perfection. Unfortunately, for me, once the story moved to the next part, I felt the story started to fall apart a bit. While I appreciate everything at work here, I found it hard to keep up. This may be due, in part, to the quality of the ARC I received. A lot of sentences were out of place and I had a hard time tracking what was going on. In the long run, however, I just feel that the story tried to do too much and would have been better had it been narrower in focus.
I still enjoyed the story and rated it 3 out of 5 stars. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine comes out September 2019.
This was cleverly written. I always enjoy books written in a unique writing format. Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is an epistolary novel, with a mixed format of emails, post cards, diary entries, school projects, interview transcripts, and media and social media entries.
I liked Alaine’s wit. I struggled with her immaturity, but hey - that’s what I get for reading YA... and also why I read very little YA.
I liked Alaine’s wit. I struggled with her immaturity, but hey - that’s what I get for reading YA... and also why I read very little YA.
I was given a free copy of this book from #netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Alaine got in trouble at school and is suspended. Her mom decides to send her to Haiti to spend the rest of the school year doing an "immersion" project in her home country of Haiti. Alaine gets to experience her culture in ways that she hasn't before, and gets to develop deeper relationships with her family. I really wanted to love this book, but just didn't.
Reasons you should read this book:
1) The story-telling through letters. This book was really unique with its epistolary style, and it brought Alaine's character to life.
2) You learn some great things about Haiti. I mean, how often do we see books take place in Haiti? Not often. Plus the Haitian-American rep, showing us more about the culture rather than how it's constantly portrayed as just a poor country.
3) So many kick-ass characters. Alaine's mom being a world-known journalist? Her aunt one of the most influential people in Haiti? All unique, but we see the family resemblance between them all.
4) It pulls at your heartstrings. Alaine goes though a lot. She messes up. She messes up more than once, and our heart is pulled is many different ways as does her. It's a messy, emotional, ride, and we're going along with it.
5) Curses. Whether you believe in them or not, it's woven into the story where it's sure to affect you.
6) Mother-daughter relationships. Rocky ones. Growing up in a broken home is more and more common, and seeing a family deal with that and come to terms with other things going on within them adds many more layers to the story.
You may be thinking, 400+ pages for a contemporary? Well, that sounds like longer than necessary for many contemporaries but don't get me wrong, this book works it. Due to it's differently story telling methods, many pages fly by. And for the longer sections, there's always something keeping us on the edge of our toes waiting to see what's going to happen. I felt like I really didn't sit down to read too much while reading this, but it was easy to get so into it when I was reading that it just flew by.
I really loved the character of Alaine. She was really snarky, and had an attitude. She was definitely not perfect, she was flawed, but she was likeable for those reasons.
My only real issue was at times the format of this book made it a bit confusing with time periods and a bunch of other characters being added in without as much prelude to them. There could be a lot going on between the different time periods that we get during this story.
Overall, it was a fun read with entertaining characters. There was some love interest stuff, but it never took the forefront which was nice. The family story is the main story happening here, and it's the story that's strongest in the book.
*ARC received from HCC Frenzy for an honest review*
1) The story-telling through letters. This book was really unique with its epistolary style, and it brought Alaine's character to life.
2) You learn some great things about Haiti. I mean, how often do we see books take place in Haiti? Not often. Plus the Haitian-American rep, showing us more about the culture rather than how it's constantly portrayed as just a poor country.
3) So many kick-ass characters. Alaine's mom being a world-known journalist? Her aunt one of the most influential people in Haiti? All unique, but we see the family resemblance between them all.
4) It pulls at your heartstrings. Alaine goes though a lot. She messes up. She messes up more than once, and our heart is pulled is many different ways as does her. It's a messy, emotional, ride, and we're going along with it.
5) Curses. Whether you believe in them or not, it's woven into the story where it's sure to affect you.
6) Mother-daughter relationships. Rocky ones. Growing up in a broken home is more and more common, and seeing a family deal with that and come to terms with other things going on within them adds many more layers to the story.
You may be thinking, 400+ pages for a contemporary? Well, that sounds like longer than necessary for many contemporaries but don't get me wrong, this book works it. Due to it's differently story telling methods, many pages fly by. And for the longer sections, there's always something keeping us on the edge of our toes waiting to see what's going to happen. I felt like I really didn't sit down to read too much while reading this, but it was easy to get so into it when I was reading that it just flew by.
I really loved the character of Alaine. She was really snarky, and had an attitude. She was definitely not perfect, she was flawed, but she was likeable for those reasons.
My only real issue was at times the format of this book made it a bit confusing with time periods and a bunch of other characters being added in without as much prelude to them. There could be a lot going on between the different time periods that we get during this story.
Overall, it was a fun read with entertaining characters. There was some love interest stuff, but it never took the forefront which was nice. The family story is the main story happening here, and it's the story that's strongest in the book.
*ARC received from HCC Frenzy for an honest review*
I don't know why it took me so long go to read this book. I just loved it. Alaine is a character, she's funny, real and just an all-around fun person. I mean she knows when she's being too much and she lived forward with conviction. I admire her outlook on life and her never giving up the character. As much as we all know the outcome we want Alaine t9 to be right.
I loved that the main setting and background are Hatti. It gave us a new outlook and description of Hatti that I appreciated
There was depth, discovery and growth for all characters, I had no idea where the story was going and it was a journey that I appreciated.
A must-read for sure
I loved that the main setting and background are Hatti. It gave us a new outlook and description of Hatti that I appreciated
There was depth, discovery and growth for all characters, I had no idea where the story was going and it was a journey that I appreciated.
A must-read for sure
I’m so glad I read Dear Haiti, Love Alaine! I received a digital review copy from NetGalley and Inkyard Press (Harlequin) in exchange for an honest review. I loved this novel so much that, after reading the eARC, I pre-ordered both a finished copy and the audiobook, listening to it, in full, in the two days after its release. (Bahni Turpin narrates the audiobook and is wonderful, as usual.)
Alaine Beauparlant is super-smart, ambitious, and curious, traits that seem to serve her well and land her in trouble in equal measure. Thanks to the Moulites’ stunning writing and character development, Alaine feels true-to-life from the first page, growing more even complex and thoughtful as the story progresses. This is an epistolary novel featuring diary entries, emails, postcards, news articles, and transcripts of conversations, and the variety in form and voice made the 430-ish pages fly by.
Alaine is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She lives with her (single) father, Jules, in Miami, where he works as a psychiatrist and she attends a progressive Catholic school. Her mother, Celeste, is a high-profile TV journalist living and working in Washington, D.C., and she has never been a consistent or accessible figure in Alaine’s life. Celeste's twin, Alaine’s Tati Estelle, is an influential woman in Haiti who works as both the Minister of Tourism and the CEO of a charitable start-up.
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is a standout debut, a loving portrait of both Alaine (full of heart, dry wit, and good intentions) and Haiti. This will be a great fit for readers who enjoy heartfelt, intricately-crafted young adult fiction and the work of Elizabeth Acevedo, Ashley Herring Blake, Deb Caletti, and Brandy Colbert.
Alaine Beauparlant is super-smart, ambitious, and curious, traits that seem to serve her well and land her in trouble in equal measure. Thanks to the Moulites’ stunning writing and character development, Alaine feels true-to-life from the first page, growing more even complex and thoughtful as the story progresses. This is an epistolary novel featuring diary entries, emails, postcards, news articles, and transcripts of conversations, and the variety in form and voice made the 430-ish pages fly by.
Alaine is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She lives with her (single) father, Jules, in Miami, where he works as a psychiatrist and she attends a progressive Catholic school. Her mother, Celeste, is a high-profile TV journalist living and working in Washington, D.C., and she has never been a consistent or accessible figure in Alaine’s life. Celeste's twin, Alaine’s Tati Estelle, is an influential woman in Haiti who works as both the Minister of Tourism and the CEO of a charitable start-up.
Spoiler
After her mom's career hits a road-bump, Alaine hits one of her own. In the aftermath, her dad sends her to Haiti to intern with Estelle at her company, PATRON PAL, which connects donors ("patrons") with bright Haitian children in need (“pals")—a sort of 21st century version of a "sponsor a child" charity, gamified and made accessible by a smartphone app. While in Haiti, Alaine seeks to learn more about her family and its role in Haitian history (for both her own edification and a school assignment), and, naturally, learns a great deal about herself and her immediate family in the process.Dear Haiti, Love Alaine is a standout debut, a loving portrait of both Alaine (full of heart, dry wit, and good intentions) and Haiti. This will be a great fit for readers who enjoy heartfelt, intricately-crafted young adult fiction and the work of Elizabeth Acevedo, Ashley Herring Blake, Deb Caletti, and Brandy Colbert.
dnf super early. i did actually enjoy the beginnings of this novel and my guess is that maybe at some point, i might return to this book if i'm truly in the mood to do so. i just can't do ya
I enjoyed this book so much! First of all, Alaine is one of my new favorite characters. Secondly, Haiti holds a special place in my heart and I really enjoyed seeing a different side. It is a beautiful, but broken, country. I love how the authors showed it’s positive aspects too. When I visited 5 years ago, I was far from the city, up in the mountains, helping at one of the private schools. I didn’t get to see more than a sliver of everything Haiti has to offer. Such a good read!