Greetings readers!  Thanks for stopping to read my long overdue post.  Over the holidays I sat down to read How to Build a House by Dana Reinhardt.  This is the story of a 17 year a old do-gooder named Harper who believed her life was almost perfect despite the fact that her mother had passed away when she was very young.  Her father had remarried a woman who had two daughters of her own that Harper felt were like real sisters.  She and her step-sister Tess were even best friends.  Suddenly, she learned that her father and step-mother had decided to divorce, she and Tess had a falling out, and a she had been hurt by her best male friend.  This poses an interesting question readers.  What would you do if you were in this situation?  Would  you call up friends to talk about it?  Post about it on Facebook?  Feel sorry for yourself?

I’m personally been fortunate to live in a family whose parents have been married for 42 years.  I have however had friends who have not been so lucky and have personally seen what divorce alone can do to someone, especially a teenager.  Throw in all of the other drama going on in Harper’s life and I think anyone would have trouble making sense of everything.

Harper chose to do something that not many of us would do.  She chose to give back to others in an attempt to distract herself from her “catastrophes.”  When a town in Tennessee is destroyed by a tornado, Harper decides to take 12 weeks and re-build a house from the ground up for complete strangers.  She even starts dating a guy whose house she is helping to rebuild.  Through the process she reflects on her own life at home and on the house that she is helping to build.  She explores what it means to be a “family” and what actually makes a “home.”  So I ask you, what does family mean to you?  Tell me about it.  I want to hear.

Imagine that you came home from school one day with a mysterious box addressed to waiting for you on your porch.  When you open it you find a series of tapes recorded by a classmate who had killed herself just weeks earlier.  This is exactly what happened to Clay Jensen, when he found a box of tapes from Hannah Baker, whom he once had a crush on.  When he listened to the tapes he learned that there were 13 reasons why she decided to commit suicide.  If you were one of the people who received these tapes, you were one of the reasons.

This book makes you realize how the little things you do and say every day affect the people around you.  Some of the things that affected her were such simple small things, but when you think about it could really take a toll on someone else.

If you want to read a book that will totally pull you in, you need to read this book by Jay Asher.