How to Build a Heart

A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of 2020 Family isn't something you're born into it's something you build. One young womans 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 Izzys moved to a new town nearly every year since, far from the help of her extended family in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. When Izzys hardworking mom moves their small family to Virginia, all her dreams start clicking into place. She likes her new schooleven 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: Izzys 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 shes been searching for, until all the secret pieces of her life begin to collide.How to Build a Heart is the story of Izzys 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.