Book Review: The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Quercus (7 Nov 2013)
• ISBN-10: 1780876823
• ISBN-13: 978-1780876825
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Cassie Hobbes can tell you what you will do before you do. She can tell what kind of person you are, how you will react and how you will behave. But she can’t tell you what happened to her mother.

Cassie is recruited by the FBI, identified as a ‘Natural’, one of few who are uniquely gifted in human behaviour, emotional reading, lying or statistics. Cassie is a natural born profiler, and the FBI want her to join it’s team of teenage naturals to solve cold cases and to hone her talents. For Cassie, it is a rare opportunity to perhaps work on the inside and find out what exactly happened to her mother that night in the dressing room that Cassie found drenched in blood.

Pretty soon Cassie is living with four strangers. People who can answer her questions before she’s even asked it, read her feelings off her face, call her out on lies and tell the exact probability of certain situations. Life isn’t easy and Cassie has to figure out the two boys and her feelings for them, all while a serial killer has locked their gaze on Cassie. Pretty soon the case the Naturals focus on aren’t so cold...but active.

Okay, first of all, let me just say that I LOVED The Naturals. I’m a huge fan of movies like The Silence of the Lambs and TV shows like Criminal Minds. This was like an amazing mash up of the two and maybe The. O.C. Boy drama, girl drama, and serial killers. 

It was expertly written and very clever. I didn’t get lost in the information or the details, but sunk fully into the story as though it was happening all around me. Dean was probably my favourite character...and more than likely will be for a lot of people. After all, we’re all suckers for the dark, brooding type, aren’t we?

I seriously couldn’t put this book down and very much hope there will be another one to follow on.