North of Happy by Adi Alsaid is a heartfelt exploration of grief, passion, and self-discovery. Carlos, struggling after his brother’s death, leaves home and follows his dream to cook, taking a job at an exclusive restaurant. Through food, friendship, and love, he begins to heal. Perfect for fans of contemporary YA with depth and emotional insight.

There are pieces of this book that I want to hug, then there are pieces of this book I want to throw across a room.

Loved the interaction between the main character and his deceased brother, loved the kitchen talk. Love interest? A little to be desired, but maybe I’m just cynical

Alsaid's latest is more my speed than his last book. A very sweet romance centered around working in a restaurant. Even though I really disliked Always Sometimes Never, I will keep reading him in hopes of more in this vein.

North Of Happy is a YA book with potential; a story about family, grief, and first love brought together by one character’s passion for food. This story is set in Mexico City and about the culinary art. It was about what goes on behind a restaurant, the steps and processes of making delicious food. It made me hungry and salivating on all the good food with the way the author describes it.

North of Happy is my second Adi Alsaid book. I'm glad I read it because his writing is pretty fantastic, but this isn't quite my favorite of the two. Carlos's story just didn't appeal to me as much yet it was truly an interesting read.

I great contemporary! Carlos was a very relatable protagonist. This was great at examining specific issues nowadays that young adults and adults alike go through, and I thought it handled them very genuinely. 4/5 stars

Carlos Portillo lives in Mexico City with his wealthy parents. He’s about to start an internship with his father’s company and college in the fall. Everything in his life seems perfect, except he can’t stop seeing his dead brother, Felix. Carlos feels he is the only one who is still grieving for his brother. After hearing his father dismiss his brother during a speech at his graduation party, Carlos leaves and finds himself in Needle Eye Island, Washington state. Looking for closure for Felix’s death, Carlos heads to Provecho, a restaurant that was on a list of places Felix wanted to eat at before he died. While there, he meets Emma, the daughter of the chef, and quickly falls for her. He also has a chance to explore his love for cooking with Chef Elise. Carlos, with some help from Felix, has to learn what he wants from his stay in Needle Eye and what is most important to him, while learning to live with the loss of his older brother.

Carlos is awkward, shy, and funny. He was really relatable. Emma was kind of annoying. I felt like I had read a character like her in so many other books. Felix was a little annoying at first, but as the book progressed, his presence was a nice break up to the melancholy moments.

This book dealt with grief in really interesting ways. Not just with the existence of Felix, but with the thoughts and conversations of the characters too. I found the pacing to be kind of slow and the present tense didn’t help sometimes. Overall, I really enjoyed the characters, setting, and story!

As a reader, I’d been curious about North of Happy for quite a while. I hadn’t read any of Alsaid’s previous work, but I had heard a lot of buzz surrounding both Let’s Get Lost and Never Always Sometimes, so I was surprised that this one had seemed to fly under my radar. I’m also a HUGE fan of FoodNetwork, Chef’s Table, food blogs, etc. so seeing a YA book explore a protagonist with similar interests (and a great deal more talent than I possess) was a draw as well.

While North of Happy definitely had a focus on food, it had a larger focus on family and dealing with death and grief, and I loved seeing how that manifested in the protagonist’s desire to pursue a culinary career. Protagonist Carlos was different than his spontaneous older brother Felix in many ways, but they were linked by their passion for food. So when Carlos is grieving Felix, it’s fitting that he’s drawn to cooking, to creating, to a form of expression that provides not only a constructive outlet for his anger and grief and confusion, but also serves to soothe and comfort others. It also provided a lot of realistic insight into the not often glamorous life of working in a kitchen, from the late nights to early mornings, beginning at the bottom of the pack and increasing your status dish by dish (in Carlos’ case literally, as he lands a spot as a dishwasher in a premiere restaurant on a sleepy island off the coast of Seattle).

Carlos’ story is also one of travel and self exploration, as he leaves his birthplace of Mexico City to chase an obscure dream in the Pacific Northwest after seeing a thriving and innovative restaurant featured on TV. I am always a huge fan of novels that portray protagonist navigating two cultures and sharing in their unique experiences, and North of Happy was no exception. There’s a touch of magical realism in the writing that’s likely born from the protagonist/author’s Latinx roots, in the way Felix manifests to Carlos in the everyday elements of his life, from animals passing by to the soap suds on the dishes he scrubs for twelve hours a day. Rather than be a commentary on mental illness, it feels like a natural part of the storytelling, a device to portray just how insular Carlos’ world has become since the death of his beloved older brother, and how it fogs the way he interacts with the rest of the world.

While I loved the unique storytelling, small island setting and of course the food descriptions (especially how each chapter started with a recipe!) there were some elements of the novel that didn’t impress me as much. There’s a romance between Carlos and a girl he meets on the island which has its sweet moments, but ultimately felt distracting to the larger overall themes happening with grief, coming of age, career goals, etc. The book also ended on what I felt was a rather melancholy, unfair tone, that negated a lot of the work that Carlos had done over one mistake, which made me frustrated as a reader since I had spent so much time rooting for him throughout his journey.

Overall: As a foodie, North of Happy was an incredible read and one that I’d love to recommend to anyone who finds themselves watching cooking shows or chef documentaries, whether for wish-fulfillment or for practice. It captured the culture of that world incredibly well. However, the story ultimately ended in a way that was unsatisfying and I hoped for more for the protagonist. However, I definitely see myself trying more of Adi Alsaid’s books in the future and would love to learn more about his own background and relationship with food/cooking, as it's an element I’ve seen so rarely explored in YA!

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy for review - in exchange, here it is - my honest review! All opinions are my own and do not reflect the view of any organization that I am affiliated with.

Carlos is a rich boy who has lived a life of privilege in Mexico City. Now that he's about to graduate high school, his life ahead of him is guaranteed to be nice and bring him lots of money and success.When a traumatic thing happens, he starts questioning all the laid out plans for him - and bolts. He pursues his passion for cooking in a Seattle restaurant, where everything is so beautiful that it hurts. A lot of things start going his way during his short stay, including a girl. So what's next?

I liked the plot of his book very much. It's a fiery beginning with a hare-brained and daring escape from everything Carlos has known. Don't we all dream about just taking off one day, no plans or worries? I loved that part,and the surprising realism of Carlos's escape: his credit cards are cut off, he doesn't know what he's doing one hour to the next, and the past refuses to give up haunting his ass - but he falls in love with this place head over heels in a very endearing way.

I loved the restaurant life (the author has done the research super well), Carlos's horrible dilemma when he is placed between a rock and a hard place, and the social dynamics that support and tear him down. What I didn't love... are the characters. I didn't connect with Carlos or the girl (Emma), although I loved the other restaurant folks. And I thought Emma was emotionally manipulative to a problematic degree (my parents divorced and I'm lonely.. YOU would never make me feel this way, RIGHT? Because you owe me my emotional well-being??), but it was never addressed. This was enough of an issue that I almost gave this 3 stars... but I loved the restaurant parts too much. My weakness!!

So, read this if you like a plot-driven book centered around food and restaurants, and you tolerate semi-developed characters and a tiny bit of magic realism.

This book felt like a 180 from his last book, and I just could not get into this one. I found both the main characters to be annoying and a bit pretentious. I was disappointed in this one.

Highly improbable. While encouraging teens to follow your dreams it also seemed to encourage flying in the face of reason and defying your parents.

Absolutely my favorite thing about this book was the recipes that tied everything together and that "titled" the chapters. It should have seemed gimmicky, but it didn't. Instead, it enriched the story for me. Carlos is a cool guy and his "shadow" is great at being his mechanism for handling grief. I loved the island, the descriptions of his home in Mexico City, the idea that someone could get tired of paradise, all of it.

North of Happy by Adi Alsaid

1 cup likeable protagonist
2 ½ cups grief-induced hallucinations
3 cups food porn
½ cup diversity
6 TB forbidden romance
2 TB running away from problems
1 tsp gorgeous Seattle scenery
½ tsp restaurant setting

I cannot resist a novel that is stuffed full of food as this one is. I loved how every chapter heading started off with a recipe that fit into the plot perfectly. Carlos expresses himself through food and cooking, and the descriptions of food are exquisite. I was hungry the entire time I was reading this.

I really liked Carlos’ older brother, Felix, or at least the Felix Carlos keeps seeing hallucinations of. He was hilarious and always seemed to know just what to say or do to spur Carlos forward into living his own life. Suffering the loss of a loved one can be catastrophic, and Alsaid does such a great job of portraying the paralysis of grief. Carlos can’t seem to move on after his brother is shot and killed in Mexico City while the two of them are out hunting for the best tacos in Mexico. It completely derails his life. He worships his older brother and can’t cope with his loss at all.

So when Carlos reaches his breaking point during a graduation party thrown in his honor he gets the crazy idea to go to Seattle in order to eat at a restaurant his brother wanted to visit one day. Before he knows it he’s not only eating at that restaurant, he’s washing dishes there and could potentially end up cooking there himself one day if he can take that leap and let go of his past and the inhibitions holding him back.

Watching Carlos struggle to live again and to chase his dreams was so poignant (I may have shed a tear or two for him), and I was completely riveted by all the delicious food he cooks along the way. It’s a fun diverse read that will leave you hungry for more (yes, I went there). I know that now I have to read all of Alsaid’s other books ASAP. This is such a realistic portrayal of grief that I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has ever lost someone they love.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

3.5 stars.

There was a lot I liked and a bit I didn't like about this book. Firstly, it was refreshing - I loved the setting - first in Mexico, then on to the world of cooking! I did love perhaps the first third of the book, but then unfortunately it didn't quite sustain that for me.

By the end of it, I'm not sure how I felt about Carlos - I didn't necessarily get much character development from him. And to be honest, I also didn't love the romance either. I think this book had a lot of potential, and I did really want to love it, but in the end I just didn't quite.

I enjoyed Adi Alsaid’s first novel, so I decided to give this one a try. It was an OK read, but it wasn’t completely satisfying.

After his brother Felix is killed in a shooting, Carlos is mired in grief. He feels trapped by his family and their expectations for his future, and apparitions of his brother are urging him to leave Mexico City. Carlos loves to cook, and he and Felix shared an appreciation for food, so he decides to go to America and eat a meal at a restaurant mentioned in one of Felix’s journals in memory of his brother. Two unexpected things happen on his trip, though. First, he meets the chef’s daughter, Emma, and finds she makes him feel normal again, and then Emma gets him a job at the restaurant. Carlos falls in love with both Emma and cooking at the restaurant, but the course of neither of those loves runs smoothly. And there’s still the question of Felix’s continued presence and Carlos’s family and future waiting back in Mexico . . .

I’ve read a number of YA novels recently about grieving teens mourning the deaths of friends, parents, and siblings. This book probably made the least emotional impact, which may have been part of the reason I didn’t find it totally satisfying. I liked the idea behind the apparitions of Felix, and the way they were handled was sometimes amusing. (Felix takes various forms throughout the book, including a pigeon and a dog.) But I think Felix’s constant presence also made his death seem less real and thus less moving to me.

The ending also isn’t a traditionally happy ending. There’s resolution to Carlos’s grief and his family issues, but readers who get really invested in Carlos’s relationship with Emma and his experiences at the restaurant might be disappointed with the way they are handled at the end of the novel.

So, it’s not a bad read, but it left me feeling a little emotionally flat. I’d say readers who enjoy YA contemporaries that deal with serious subjects might want to give it a try, as long as they don’t want a super angsty story.

An eARC of this novel was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

North of Happy is a quick, quietly powerful, and always entertaining story about grief, love, and food. It will undoubtedly appeal to fans of Adi Alsaid's first two novels, but it stands alone on his own and will likely make any reader who stumbles across it a fan of his. The magic of the settings comes to life whether it's Mexico City, inside a kitchen, or at a lake full of bioluminescent plankton. Carlos' passionate love of cooking is something not seen in too many YA novels, and his experiences with hard work, first love, and all sorts of grief will make him a character readers will want to succeed. Don't miss out on this one.

3.5 stars

YA novel with potential; a story about family, grief, and first love brought together by one character’s passion for food.

18 year old Carlos has lived a privileged life in Mexico City. He lives in awe of his older brother, Felix who left home to pursue his dreams. The brothers bond over their mutual love of food. However, life changes dramatically when late one night while wandering around the streets of Mexico City, a tragic accident occurs and Felix is killed. Not knowing how to deal with his grief, Carlos flees home and decides to try one of the restaurants that Felix noted in his journal as “a must eat at in his lifetime”, Provecho.

Suddenly, Carlos finds himself on a small island outside of Seattle. While waiting for two days to eat at Provecho, he befriends the hostess, Emma and finds himself being offered a job as a dishwasher. Carlos immerses himself in Provecho’s kitchen and learns the ins-and-outs of what it takes to be a chef. He also finds himself falling in love with Emma, but cannot shake the ghost of Felix, who keeps appearing and offering Carlos advice on his life choices.

There were elements that worked/didn’t work for me. What did work was Carlos’s love of food. I loved how all of the recipes were integrated into each chapter, and I liked reading about what was going on behind the scenes of the restaurant. On the other hand, Carlos and Emma could have been developed more. I wanted more of Carlos’s home life, while it was clear he was resentful of his father, the limited details about his parents made it hard to sympathize with him. Same goes for Emma.

Ultimately, I found North of Happy to be an entertaining read, and as a foodie, I enjoyed how the author brought Carlos’s love of food to life and how he used it to heal from his brother’s death.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Carlos lives with his family in Mexico City. His brother Felix takes him on an all-night quest for the perfect taco that ends with Felix being shot and killed. Felix was a bit of a rebel child who left home and traveled the world instead of leading the life their parents wanted him to. Carlos is generally the “good kid” who does what he is supposed to. However, Felix’s death has him rattled and questioning everything. He takes off during his high school graduation party and ends up on an island off the coast of Washington. There is a restaurant there that Felix wanted to try so Carlos makes a reservation and has one of the best meals of his life. He also meets Emma, the daughter of the amazing chef at the restaurant. They hit it off and she ends up getting him a job as a dishwasher. Carlos finds himself in the world of food and realizes he really likes it. The Chef takes an interest in Carlos and starts tutoring him in the cooking arts. Of course this conflicts with his budding relationship with Emma. Choices have to be made and there are consequences for those choices.

I thought this book was an interesting look at grief. Carlos hallucinates his brother Felix throughout the story. He interacts with him in ways that help him work through what he is going through and experiencing. It was a different way to portray grief and I think it worked. As Carlos was able to move on Felix appeared less and less and his interactions were less essential. There were a couple of things that I didn’t think worked as well. Each chapter begins with a recipe; however, it is just the ingredients list. For a book that relies so heavily on food you would think the recipe instructions would have been included. Some of the recipes sounded intriguing but with only ingredients you are left wondering how they all go together. I also really didn’t think the relationship between Carlos and Emma worked. It wasn’t quite “insta-love” but it was pretty close on Carlos’s end. I just didn’t see anything more than a fling in their relationship or a substitute for the loss of his brother. So the ending didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I actually liked it better when it seemed he was moving on.

I received this book from Netgalley.

I was so pleased after i the book by Adi Alsaid's Never Always Sometimes. His new book North of Happy didn't charm me as much. I like the witty style but this one fell a bit short. I had an issue with some characters in the story.

Late one night, Carlos and his older brother, Felix, decide to taste test their way through the food stands of Mexico City in search of the perfect taco. In a tragic accident, stray bullets kill the free-spirited, nomadic Felix, leaving Carlos with his brother’s ghost and the desire to recover his own happiness. During Carlos’ high school graduation party—faced with a well intentioned but uninspiring predetermined future with the family business—Carlos runs away from his privileged life to a small island off of Washington state. With no plans except to visit Provecho, a bucket list restaurant in his brother’s diary, Carlos must find a place to sleep and a way to earn a living. In a matter of luck or fate, Carlos begins working as a dishwasher at Provecho and is taken under the wing of the master chef with the threatening promise of termination if he does not stop dating her daughter, Emma. Carlos must learn to fit in and earn his keep while navigating mental exhaustion and new love.

A story about romance, trust, maturity, and ambition, North of Happy makes readers feel like they are experiencing life for the first time. As stars and lakes ignite in the moonlight, Alsaid envelops readers in his enchanting backdrops and heartfelt, raw emotions. A beautifully written title for young adults looking ahead to the future, North of Happy inspires and awakens questions about the meaning of our existence. Although a somewhat clichéd plot, Alsaid adds poignant commentaries on grief and love that add an entirely fiery yet visceral quality to the story. Recipes introduce chapters to exemplify the all-pervasive passion for food and need for a fulfilling career. Days later, I find myself wondering about a conclusion and writing my own ending for Carlos, Emma, and the entire restaurant family as they touched my heart and stayed in my mind.

North of Happy is set to publish on April 25th, 2017. I would like to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Teen for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. Review by Christine Frascarelli

North of Happy by Adi Alsaid (Harlequin Teen, 2017)

I was eager to read this book because I loved Adi Alsaid's witty banter in Never Always Sometimes. His new book North of Happy didn't charm me as much.

The main character is a boy named Carlos from Mexico City who is about to graduate high school and embark on the future his parents have laid out for him. Everything sounds great (on paper), except Carlos is still devastated by the tragic death of his older, nomadic brother, Felix, six months earlier. Suddenly, the path to his future doesn't seem so clear. Especially, when his brother is constantly appearing and speaking to him.

Impulsively, on the night of his graduation celebration, Carlos packs a bag and jets off to a restaurant near Seattle because his brother never got the chance to. He only intends to eat a meal and then go back home. But he ends up feeling more like himself in this place than his home. When opportunities begin to unfold before him, he begins to wonder if he belongs in this place more than anywhere else.

Each chapter opens with ingredients. I am not a foodie so this approach didn't really do anything for me. I also wasn't sold on his brother's presence but everyone grieves differently.

What was gorgeous was Alsaid's descriptive writing of Needle Eye Island. It is so rich and lush, you will wish it was a real place so you could go there. It is worth reading the book for this alone.