I love exploring new cultures, so having the opportunity to pick up Dear Haiti, Love Alaine was absolutely thrilling for me!

This novel follows the lovely Alaine as she gets sent to Haiti to fulfill a school project. Along the way she helps out her Tati's PATRON PAL app/company, meets a cute guy, learns who her real friends are, and deals with some large, life altering issues. Oh, and did I mention this book felt so darn real?!

It was a true gift to receive the opportunity to read this book. The authors make Alaine feel like a real person and present this book in a really unique matter. Emails, letters, postcards, diaries, text messages and so many different mediums of communication are present in this novel! All of these mediums make it so easy to jump in and out of the book and I felt like I lost nothing! It truly was a marvelous feat and it makes me want more from these lovely sisters and their writing abilities.

The big standout for this novel is Haiti. Obviously, it's in the title, but Maika and Maritza make it feel like you're there. The cultures and traditions are presented so beautifully and naturally. I didn't feel like anything was forced, it felt so REAL. It's hard sometimes - being a Canadian who has only visited the U.S.A and Canada because I don't know what other places are like. Sometimes reading a book like this, you get caught up and wonder if the authors actually knew what they were talking about. But this book? It read so wonderfully and you could tell the authors weren't just making up what they thought Haiti was like. I LOVE it when that happens.

The other lovely standouts of this book are:
1. Alaine's sassiness is legit how I felt as a teenager. She did have some worrisome moments (like the reason she was sent to Haiti to begin with), but she had the teenage angst we all had back in the day. Other words you might use to describe her are: feisty, fierce, and fabulous! She's such a strong lead and she has flaws which makes her more lovable. She's no Mary Jane/Mary Sue!
2. Jason, Estelle, Roseline and our large assortment of characters didn't feel like background characters. They were used effectively and written in a way that made them have a point to being there.
3. Alzheimer's. Medical issues SUCK, but having a book that shows the good and the bad sides of these diseases is PERFECTION. This book wasn't just 'boo hoo Alzheimer's', it also showed the hope people can have.
4. The relationship between Alaine and her parents made me feel really connected to her. I had a parent that worked more than I wanted too and I am sad to say I lost a lot of time with them. Seeing that exact feeling put into a book (but have a more happy ending) made me have butterflies and feel really affectionate towards this novel. Maika and Martiza connected with teenage me SO HARD with this plot thread.
5. PATRON PAL. I'm always down for a plot line that brings up actual, real-life issues and presents them in a manner that makes sense. How can we help people? Make an app! Donate! Help people who need help! This book also presents helping poorer countries/nations in a really smart way - we want to provide them a sustainable way to pull themselves back up and take care of themselves, not just give them money forever and wish them luck. I'm glad they pointed that out in this book because it's a REALLY important lesson for people to learn.

I would love to hear the thoughts of reviewers who are Haitian, Haitian-American or have lived in Haiti. I think this book is pretty darn swell, but my background isn't of this culture. One thing that I hope comes out with this book is more people want to read about other cultures. Books like these make me want to know and learn more!

Do I have any negatives? Yes. I would have liked a couple of more chapters to see what happened after the project, but the book wasn't set up that way. I really grew to love these characters and I wanted a little more time with them. Other than that, my negatives are non-existent. I think this book is unique, beautiful, and full of stories that need to be heard. I truly respect these authors and love that there are books like this out there. We need more authors and books like this.

Also, the cover? Oh-my-gosh it is stunning! Having a physical copy of this book in my house is a real gem for me! It's eye popping and gets your attention but at the same time it's really fabulous and subtle. I LOVE IT!

Five out of five stars.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. ( )

An immature and thoughtless girl acts out in school, and as “punishment” gets sent to Haiti to spend two months with her very affluent mother and aunt, interning at said aunts’ start up charity. Along the way she attempts to break an old family curse, meets a boy, is dramatically in denial about her mother's health, acts irrationally, and learns nothing.

This book is Alaine’s account of that journey, written in epistolary format as the final project for her "History of Latin America and Creative Writing" class. Magical realism in literature is highlighted as a big part of Latin American history in the original assignment, and the students are encouraged to implement that in the creative writing aspect of the story. (Hence the curse breaking.)

I really wanted to like this book. I know next to nothing about Haiti, and found the premise of a young Haitian American girl getting to know her Haitian family better interesting. I usually find stories dealing with dementia very hard hitting, so I expected a lot from this on that front as well. Alas, it made me feel nothing.

For me, something about the writing style was very grating. Not only was the main character incredibly annoying, as only a sarcastic know-it-all with no regard for other people’s feelings can be, but the writing in general was somehow choppy and erratic, and I had a really difficult time finding any kind of flow reading this. I do like the epistolary format of the book, but it really lost its appeal when I just wanted the main character to grow up. She very much read like a twelve-year-old, as opposed to the 17-year-old “genius” she was introduced as.

Now, I recognize that I am by no means in the target demographic for the book, so it’s entirely possible that I would have liked this had I read this twenty years ago. But as an adult, I just did not have a good time reading the story. Aside from the writing style and the main character, I also really did not enjoy the plot. I feel like the Alzheimer’s storyline alone would have had a lot to explore, and it could have been used as a path for some much needed personal growth on our main characters part, but for some reason the authors felt the need to also include two bonus plotlines, one involving the aforementioned family curse and the other a completely irrelevant corporate embezzlement twist.

This simply tried way too hard to be lighthearted and funny in a way that did not work for me, and stuffed three different, unrelated plots into one book, resulting in a rather messy and undercooked whole. In essence, a great premise with poor execution.

This was a fast read, though, so there is that. ( )

I appreciated the Caribbean representation in YA, but outside of that, I didn't connect with much else. The writing was good, but the story felt familiar enough to other YA. I look forward to reading more from the authors though. ( )

When a school presentation goes very wrong, Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti and writing the report of a lifetime. ( )

*3.5/5

i liked this book! the main character was great and i loved her humor. i really liked being able to see her inside thoughts. the format of this book was very interesting and i enjoyed it for the most part. however it did make some parts confusing, hard to follow, etc. this books was also kinda hard for me to get into to. i did however really enjoy the end when we got to see more of the characters interacting and i did enjoy the twists! ( )