“I’m working on making a world.”

From Jake Burt’s Greetings from Witness Protection!

Raised and trained by her late pickpocket grandmother after her father was sent to prison, thirteen-year-old Nicki now finds herself part of the foster care system.  Nicki has spent the past five years bouncing back-and-forth between several poorly-matched foster homes and the group home center while she waits for her dad to get out and get her.  When two U.S. Marshals show up at the center to offer Nicki the opportunity to leave her life and criminal record behind forever to live with a family about to enter witness protection, she is reluctant until she learns that her father was paroled long ago and never reached out to her.  With nowhere else to go, Nicki takes the opportunity for a home, becomes Charlotte Trevor, and travels to join the rest of her newly-created family: Jonathan, Harriet, and Jackson.  Forced to change their identities to avoid the mob that Harriet has agree to testify against, the Trevors are provided more safety as a family of four, but trying to blend in is very difficult.  As Charlotte settles into her new life in North Carolina, she struggles to connect with the moody Jackson, her new school, busybody neighbors, and everything else being part of a family entails while helping the entire family stay under the radar.  However, when it becomes obvious that someone from the past is searching for the hidden family, Charlotte will have to find a way to control her nervous pickpocketing and instead find a way to keep her new family safe.

This book has a variety of elements that come together to create an interesting story with a little something for every reader.  Burt creates a genuine and relatable main character that easily carries the story through all the twists and turns.  Greetings from Witness Protection! uses humor, wit, suspense, minor criminal activity, and lots of heart to create a captivating story for readers of all ages.