What a fun book! I really enjoyed this story, even with it’s few tiny faults. Zach is so relatable. He’s a teenager who’s been yanked from his happy life by a sudden decision by his dad and he’s ticked. He doesn’t want to live in Phoenix! He wants to go back home to Chicago where’s he a star on the football team, has great friends, and there’s also an interesting girl (Lindsey). So, he boards a bus and heads home. Of course, this causes his family a ton of trouble.

I love Witness Protection stories. I don’t know why, but I’m always a bit fascinated with them, whether it’s a criminal who has turned witness or a fairly honest person who saw something bad go down. So right away, I was hooked on this story. How do you keep a witness (or their family) safe if they don’t cooperate? Well, as we see in this book, it’s very hard to do so.

I got a real kick out of some of the bad guys. Now they come in all flavors in this book, from macho mafia man Joe to nervous sneaky Birdman. But my favorites were Lewis (he’s got anger issues) and Wade (a daft yet efficient young man). Those two paired together gave me some laughs, even if they were at the expense of their victims.

Zach’s mom was a bit on the dramatic side, and that whole bit about her female intuition was a bit silly. The most believable female character turned out to be Lindsey. I really liked that she’s still a teen, being afraid in many of the situations, yet she does her share of butt kicking when she can. She makes some mistakes but she also keeps her head in other situations.

The story added more layers as things went on. There are multiple people who want Zach’s dad to disappear and not all of them are wearing Bad Guy labels. Zach’s dad eventually has to take a much more hands on approach to the situation and I was glad to see that he was also scared at times yet still did his best to fix the situation.

While I would have liked a little more from the ladies, there was never a dull moment in the story. I listened to the story in 2 sessions, simply because I had to sleep a bit. Otherwise, I would have listened to it all in 1 go. 4.75/5 stars.

The Narration: Gary Tiedemann makes are really great Zach. He’s got that angry teen guy down. Then he does a great job with Mafia Joe and Mr. Birdman as well as angry Lewis and daft Wade. His female voices were spot on as well. His voice for the Russians or Eastern Europeans sounded more Spanish to me, but I can forgive that. The story got the characters across. Tiedemann’s pacing was perfect and there were no technical issues with the recording. 4.75/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Peter Thompson. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it. ( )