Homefree (review)

Easter Hutton has never had much of a place to call home; her address changes as often as her mother changes boyfriends. This disconnectedness only increases after Easter discovers that frequent bouts of daydreaming are actually out-of-body experiences, as she astrally projects herself across barriers of time and space. Easter's classmates are judgmental and her mother is distant and self-involved, so Easter's only real confidant is Andrew, a friend from an earlier stint in Atlanta, with whom she maintains frequent IM correspondence until Andrew turns up missing. Meanwhile, Easter learns about an underground organization called Homefree that aids teens with paranormal abilities in escaping real-world crises and developing their psychic gifts. It turns out that Easter has abilities even beyond those she recognizes, abilities that, if harnessed, will help young people like her (and, it turns out, Andrew) to survive. Though the astral-projection premise is promising—as is the notion of Homefree, a kind of teen crisis organization for the paranormal set—the plot quickly falls apart as it toggles back and forth between real-world family crises and the often murky machinations of the Homefree authorities; it is never really clear, for example, why Easter can't be informed up front of her psychic ability to identify teens in crisis. The paranormal theme is intriguing, however, and Easter and her comrades' escape from some truly dire home-life circumstances into the bosom of Homefree provides an undeniable relief. Despite the book's flaws, fans of science fiction that don't mind a problem-novel bent may just astrally project themselves over to the library to pick this one up.