Happy Thursday and welcome to my stop on the tour for How to Build a Heart!!! This is such a WONDERFUL book, and I’m so excited to be a part of the blog tour (again)! So read on to find my review (with my favorite quotes!), my bookstagram, and more info about Maria Padian!

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

How to Build a Heart by Maria Padian
Published on January 28, 2020 by Algonquin Young Readers
Genres: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
Source: the Publisher
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One young woman’s journey to find her place in the world as the carefully separated strands of her life — family, money, school, and love — begin to overlap and tangle. 
All sixteen-year-old Izzy Crawford wants is to feel like she really belongs somewhere. Her father, a marine, died in Iraq six years ago, and Izzy’s moved to a new town nearly every year since, far from the help of her extended family in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. When Izzy’s hardworking mom moves their small family to Virginia, all her dreams start clicking into place. She likes her new school—even if Izzy is careful to keep her scholarship-student status hidden from her well-to-do classmates and her new athletic and popular boyfriend. And best of all: Izzy’s family has been selected by Habitat for Humanity to build and move into a brand-new house. Izzy is this close to the community and permanence she’s been searching for, until all the secret pieces of her life begin to collide.
How to Build a Heart is the story of Izzy’s journey to find her place in the world and her discovery that the choices we make and the people we love ultimately define us and bring us home.  

A TL;DR OF MY REVIEW:

• what is FAMILY? 👩‍👧‍👦
• MORE BOOKS FEATURING ACAPELLA PLEASE AND THANKS 🎶
• BEAUTIFUL writing!!! ✍🏻
• seriously just what does family mean to you???? ❓❓❓

HOW TO BUILD A HEART has a lot of really well done plot lines woven together. I think the one that stands out the most to me is FAMILY. Who is family? What does family mean to you? How does your family affect who you are? These are all really great questions that this book deals with. (I’d go on but I kind of feel like I’m writing an english paper here…) I loved how Izzy wasn’t perfect- but she felt real. Her story, as it unfolds, takes readers to familiar places (high school parties and basketball and boys), as well as less familiar (Habitat for Humanity and acapella) and it does both marvelously. As far as the writing itself, Maria Padian’s prose was beautiful and easy to read; I’m looking forward to reading more of her work in the future. If what you’re looking for is a realistic story about family, identity, and what it means to be ourselves in different spaces and situations, then HOW TO BUILD A HEART is the book for you!

So fun fact: I initially did not like this cover! The line drawing is pretty and worlds beyond anything I could draw, but I just wasn’t in love with the style? AND THEN. it grew on me. And now I think it’s really great fit for this story!

7.5/10 stars!!!

• Lucky Caller by Emma Mills
• What I Want You to See by Catherine Linka
• All American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney
• You Again

Maria Padian has a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College and a master’s degree from the University of Virginia. She is a freelance writer, essayist, and author of young adult novels, including Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, and Out of Nowhere. Maria lives with her family in Brunswick, Maine. Visit her online at mariapadian.com and find her on Twitter: @mpadian.

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How do you feel about contemporaries? Do you always love them or always hate them or are you like me and they’re totally hit or miss? Let me know how you feel about them in the comments and have a splendiferous day!