Dear Haiti, Love Alaine
By: Maika Moulite & Maritza Moulite
Dear Haiti is about a girl who gets herself into quite a bit of trouble at school and winds up sent to Haiti to do a work program in lieu of being expelled. Alaine’s parents are both from Haiti though she has scant knowledge of the place. Her mother, a world-renowned journalist is also in Haiti dealing with the fallout of a scandal.
Oh, there’s also a family curse Alaine needs to break.
I really enjoyed Dear Haiti. It was funny, quick and a really good read.
But it was also surprisingly emotional as Alaine and her family have to deal with a heartbreaking issue. Medical not the curse although it does play a huge part in Alaine’s motives.
The story is also told with a lot of emails, texts and postcards which I always appreciate. While the book primarily is as entertaining as it strives to be I also feel like I learned something about Haiti and it brought up some good points on charity and food donations that I hadn’t thought of. Alaine’s mother and Aunt are also fantastic characters in their own right.
The mother daughter relationship is done well as her mother basically chose her career over Alaine. It’s obvious an element to their relationship but at the same time it’s done very well. Alaine struggles between hurt sometimes and lashing out but also being incredibly proud of her mother and wanting to follow in her footsteps and regretful of all the time they missed.
It helps that she has a strong relationship with her father and her Aunt.
I thought the curse thing was well handled as well. Whereas other books have gone to town and used it as a cure-all and more of a fantasy I thought this was much more leveled and realistic even though we’re talking about a so-called curse.
As to nitpicks as much as I think Alaine is a great character I can totally understand why people might not feel the same. She feels very real to me but to say she has flaws when her rashness, her stubbornness and her desperation actually put people in life threatening situations is to undersell it a little.
I also think there’s so much going on by the end it can’t help wrap up a little too quickly and neatly.
Recommend: Yes.
Overall I’d give this debut a 4- 4.5 on the old Goodreads star scale and totally recommend a read.
This is such good timing! I’ve been seeing this book everywhere. Thanks for the review.
Love the cover.
From your review, it seems like it’d be a shame to miss out on this one. Gorgeous cover. ❤️ Loved your review! It’s definitely going on my tbr! 😊😊
It’s a lot of fun!
Thank you for writing this review! Now I want to read this book.
Sure! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I’m curious to know what the points on charity and food donation were?
I think characters like Alaine may frustrate readers, but aren’t books so much more entertaining when characters are flawed? She sounds very human, realistic and passionate to me. Plus, I love when books feature characters who are journalists (or written by journalists), journalism is fascinating. This is definitely a book I will pick up
If I recall (and it’s been a couple of months) basically that long term mass donations can stifle a countries ability to get their economy and production up and running again. I certainly can’t speak to how true that is but I remember it being an interesting perspective in the book especially since Alaine’s aunt is in the process of launching a huge charity herself.
Ah, that makes sense… because then it would require foreign as opposed to building internal structures and systems that would cultivate economic growth. Like if Google began donating gifts, but not paying their taxes which would actually help.