Immediately at Home

Dana Reinhardt's How to Build a House offers a great example of "sense of place," that mystical mix of sensual clues that gives a book an almost tangible setting. Unfortunately, the story isn't as good as the setting, or the set-up.

Of course, it's a YA. (Sometimes I actually read books for grownups. Honest.)

The story picks up in the middle of the action, when main character Harper, age 17, is embarking on a summer's work project in Tennessee. She leaves behind (runs away from, really) a family in a mess - dad, who lost wife #1 (Harper's mom) to tragic accident, is in the midst of a divorce from Harper's much-loved stepmom. Torn apart are Harper and her step-sister, Tess, and her younger brother, Cole.

(When I read the phrase "part time brother" my throat tightened up. To her credit, Reinhardt doesn't reach for many trite but heart-tugging phrases like that.)

In Tennessee, Harper finds Teddy and his seemingly perfect family. The book follows a rather familiar storyline from there: Harper and Teddy fall in love. (The teenage version, anyway.) Harper realizes she's really, really mad at her dad. (His cheating led to the end of the marriage, which blasted apart Harper's family.) She spends most of the summer missing and hating her sister, Tess, who, in a surprisingly low-key turn of events, arrives at the Tennessee motel where Harper and the other home-builders are staying for the summer. The house gets finished, the summer ends, Teddy and Harper go their separate ways, and the sisters hit the road back to CA.

It would be a run-of-the-mill YA except for two things. One is Reinhardt's carefully-chosen language. About every third page or so there's a turn of phrase I had to read two or three times. They're almost cheesy, but pleasing too. Like:

"The only thing left was the sound of glass not breaking."

"Diana has a pot of chili on the stove with a smell so big it crosses state lines."

Well, I told you they were cheesy.

The second thing that puts it out of the run-of-the-mill zone (I HOPE) is that the characters - all high school kids, mostly 17-year-olds - have sex, like, as often as they brush their teeth.

Do I sound appalled? Prudish? Well...do all high school kids have sex? Gosh, I didn't. Yes, it was a hundred years ago. OK, OK, I'll try to get over it. But it's hard - especially since there wasn't a single reference to condoms, pills, or any form of birth control or disease prevention. That bothers me even more than the super-sexed high school kids. (See? I'm not a prude, just appalled.)

Anyway, I would pick up another book by Reinhardt, probably A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life. I just hope nobody gets pregnant.