The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan by Gia Cribbs (ARC): Twists & Turns in the Witness Protection Program

3.5 stars

Sloane Sullivan is on her nineteenth persona.

Not intentionally, of course, but it’s what the United States Marshals Service who run the Witness Security Program, or WITSEC, require. Sloane’s almost free–if she can graduate her last few months of high school without any mishaps, they’ll let her pursue her life, maybe go to college.

But when the reappearance of people from Sloane’s past show up, and secrets about what really happened years ago, Sloane might just learn that she can’t trust anyone and that everything she knows is false.

I did enjoy reading this and sped through it relatively quickly, although it was a bit slow at first.

I found the concept to be very cool and I’m not usually a thriller reader (mysteries I’m fine with, but thrillers are usually pointless to me, i.e. Genuine Fraud and In Her Skin) but I actually liked parts of this thriller, so that was definitely a win when the genre was working against me.

In this review I unfortunately can’t really comment on how good this is to experienced thriller readers (predictable or not? I do not know), but for a novice thriller reader, I did enjoy this a lot more than other thrillers I’ve read!

The entire idea of WITSEC (the witness protection program) in a book was really fun and I loved reading about it! I’ve never really thought about WITSEC before except in that one Disney movie with Demi Lovato & Selena Gomez (lol), but having it be a key part of this novel was super cool.

It made the story a lot more engaging than the typical “girl on the run” sort of thriller, and having them be “on the run” but as a part of WITSEC was a lot more fun. Plus, Cribbs really upped the stakes with that element of Sloane’s past, Jason, introduced early in the novel.

At first, it felt pretty standard girl-on-the-run, but it definitely got a lot more interesting and in-depth as the story wore on. You learn about the just how deep this story goes–and the twists and turns get more intense as the story wears on.

Just when you think Cribbs is done with throwing plot twists at you, she throws one last one at the end that can be summarized by a keyboard smash.

The twists and turns were definitely my favorite part of this novel, closely followed by the whole WITSEC portion of the novel.

I thought Sloane was a cool character, although I felt like she wasn’t the smartest and I didn’t really get a good grasp on her character, partly because she had gone through so many identities by the time this book started that she barely knew who she herself was.

I was mostly here for the plot, and I wished the character element of the story was a little stronger. It almost felt like it was a romance-saves-the-day sort of novel because of how Jason played a really huge role in the ~things~ that happen to help release Sloane.

I think this was well-written, although the pacing was a tad slow in the first half, but thriller just seems to be not the genre for me because I’m never really able to connect with the protagonists on the level that I want to. I definitely think die-hard thriller fans would want to check it out because it seems like a good thriller, but for me, it didn’t really do much to convince me to convert to the genre.

Overall, I did enjoy reading and didn’t abhor any part of this. The plot twists and WITSEC element were very cool, I just ended up being sort of apathetic to everything else. I think if this seems like your thing, go for it.

Thank you so much to Gia Cribbs for hosting this giveaway and sending me an ARC of her debut!

What thriller novels have you loved? Do you think you’re going to check this one out?