How to Build a House

Harper's father and stepmother are getting divorced, and relations are strained with her stepsister and best friend, Tess. In an attempt to escape her life, she volunteers to spend her summer with a group of teens helping a family in tornado-ravaged Tennessee rebuild their home. Caitlin Greer gives the teenaged Harper a fast-paced but strangely unemotional voice. She sounds like she's in a race whose outcome is of no interest. As in Reinhardt's previous novel, A BRIEF CHAPTER IN MY IMPOSSIBLE LIFE, the impact of the positive values of family, friendship, teamwork, and social responsibility are devalued by the excess of casual, emotionless sex, which is portrayed as the norm. This makes the book inappropriate for any but the most mature teen listeners. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 7, 2008
Reinhardt artfully parallels the construction of a house with the reconstruction of a broken family in a work as intimate and intelligently wrought as her previous YA novels, A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
and Harmless
. Shaken by the recent divorce of her father and stepmother and her separation from stepsister and best friend, Tess, Harper Evans jumps at the chance to participate in a summer program in a small Tennessee town, where she and other high school students will build a new house for a family whose home was destroyed by a tornado. Harper aims to bury herself in physical labor to forget about problems back in L.A., but gets sidetracked when she falls in love with Teddy, one of the house's intended residents. Weaving flashbacks of Harper's home life before and after the divorce into the romance between Harper and Teddy, Reinhardt builds a story within a story: one exploring reasons the heroine feels betrayed, the other focusing on how she learns to trust again. This meticulously crafted book illustrates how both homes and relationships can be resurrected through hard work, hope and teamwork. Ages 12-up.