Review: A New Home
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 1, 2012
A New Home is a nice little story about Hannah, an adopted girl, who has always been plagued by visions.  Her first vision took place when she was only a few years old when she "saw" that her grandfather was killed in a car accident and hysterically told her mother about it before the police showed up at the door to share the news that he was dead.Based on this incident, and others that have occurred over the years, the family knows that if she sees it, it will happen.  Unfortuantely, poor Hannah, at age 12, has seen the worst vision yet.  The one that shows that every adult will die of a terrible virus starting in seven years and the children will be left behind to try to survive.  Hannah knows what needs to be done if the human race is to survive and shares the plans with her parents.In order to survive though, they must gather other families and build a self sustaining "fortress" type of facility in the wilderness of Idaho.  This first segment in the series covers the Hannah and her mother as they travel around the US, convincing the other families to leave their existing homes and lives and give up everything based on a 12 yr old girl's apocalyptic vision.The twist to the story is that as each person joins or does not join, Hannah's vision will also "update" thus she knows what has to happen for the children to survive.Each segment is short - novella length as one other review stated.  It is also rather simplistically written - while we get to know the main characters, there are no major issues and, while the whole point of reading a story is to suspend belief, you have to do it quite a bit in accepting that everyone will just drop everything and go to live in Idaho based on one child's vision.That being said, I read a lot of books (have over 1000 on my kindle alone) of all gendres and it is nice sometimes to have a non complicated story to relax with that still has a bit of tension since you know that all the adults will pass at some point, leaving the children behind.  I actually bought all of the "books" that are out in the series thus far and read them the same day (yes, I read fast!) and am looking forward to the rest to see what happens next.As far as age groups of readers, I would feel very comfortable letting my grade school child read this series.  There is no bad language, sex, or inappropriate scenes and, in future books, the deaths are handled with great care.  Harry Potter or the Hunger Games are intense and scary - Chasing Destiny, even with the subject matter is not.  That being said, it was not too childish for an adult to read as well as long as you are not expecting the intensity of some of the other apocalypse novel.My only negative is that the first few books in the series are the set up - it isn't until further along that you start getting to the point that there will be conflicts and true issues that the characters will have to deal with but it is worth the wait.