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beautifullybookishbethany 's review for:
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine
by Maritza Moulite, Maika Moulite
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine features a protagonist with a strong voice, rich thematic content, and is deeply rooted in Haitian culture and history. Major themes include cultural identity & Black identity, complicated family relationships, coping with a loved one experiencing dementia, the importance of food in Haitian culture, immigration, sexual assault, magic & religion, colonization, corruption, misuse of power, racism, poverty, and gendered expectations about ambition and parenting. I loved those elements of the narrative, but as a book, this never quite came together for me and was all over the place in terms of genre, which made for a frustrating reading experience. And honestly, the fact that it was trying to address so many important themes may be part of why it felt so scattered without adequately addressing very many of these issues. All of the issues touched on are certainly important and worth exploring, but a somewhat narrower focus combined with greater clarity of plot and genre would have made this more impactful in my opinion. That said, I do think that this offers a window into an place and people group that are under-represented in publishing and certainly in YA literature and I hope we see more in the future.
Written in epistolary format, this is a collection of emails, journal entries, and other documents supposedly gathered for a school project. While this was an interesting idea, it ultimately felt a bit gimmicky to me and I'm not sure it was the most effective approach to telling the story, given the sometimes strange directions that it took. It felt more like a way to include a good deal of Haitian history, but I think that could have been accomplished in other ways. Also, the organization of documents and narrative sometimes went back and forth in time in a way that was disorienting and, if intended to add suspense, didn't accomplish its goal.
In terms of genre, this began like a light-hearted YA contemporary with Alaines great, sarcastic voice. Then increasingly serious and heavy content was added in, which clashed with the continued tongue-in-cheek style. I get that Alaine uses humor as a coping mechanism, but things like dementia and sexual assault of child felt like they needed more gravity in terms of tone than they sometimes got. And then, this creepy magica/mystery element involving a family curse and Voudou gets thrown in, which also could be cool but tonally doesn't fit because the book isn't structured like a mystery. All of that to say, this feels like three different books mashed into one, and I found the experience of reading it to be frustrating. I am all for books that bend genre, but they need to weave together elements from each in a way that feels cohesive yet fresh. This failed to do that.
I wanted to love this book, because I think so much of the content is important and valuable, but sadly much of it I just couldn't enjoy because of the tone, structure etc. I have no doubt that there will be readers who find a lot of value here and feel seen by the content included, and I hope these authors will continue to write, but perhaps without trying to do everything at once. I received an advance review copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Content warnings include rituals, references to sexual assault of a child (not on the page), divorce, blood magic, miscarriage, infidelity, parent with Alzheimer's
Written in epistolary format, this is a collection of emails, journal entries, and other documents supposedly gathered for a school project. While this was an interesting idea, it ultimately felt a bit gimmicky to me and I'm not sure it was the most effective approach to telling the story, given the sometimes strange directions that it took. It felt more like a way to include a good deal of Haitian history, but I think that could have been accomplished in other ways. Also, the organization of documents and narrative sometimes went back and forth in time in a way that was disorienting and, if intended to add suspense, didn't accomplish its goal.
In terms of genre, this began like a light-hearted YA contemporary with Alaines great, sarcastic voice. Then increasingly serious and heavy content was added in, which clashed with the continued tongue-in-cheek style. I get that Alaine uses humor as a coping mechanism, but things like dementia and sexual assault of child felt like they needed more gravity in terms of tone than they sometimes got. And then, this creepy magica/mystery element involving a family curse and Voudou gets thrown in, which also could be cool but tonally doesn't fit because the book isn't structured like a mystery. All of that to say, this feels like three different books mashed into one, and I found the experience of reading it to be frustrating. I am all for books that bend genre, but they need to weave together elements from each in a way that feels cohesive yet fresh. This failed to do that.
I wanted to love this book, because I think so much of the content is important and valuable, but sadly much of it I just couldn't enjoy because of the tone, structure etc. I have no doubt that there will be readers who find a lot of value here and feel seen by the content included, and I hope these authors will continue to write, but perhaps without trying to do everything at once. I received an advance review copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Content warnings include rituals, references to sexual assault of a child (not on the page), divorce, blood magic, miscarriage, infidelity, parent with Alzheimer's