The Naturals
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Book Cover Rating: 8.2/10
(By the way, I have literally no qualification to rate cover art quality and am purely rating it on how I feel when I see it)
Pages: 308
Genre: Young Adult, Realistic Fiction, Mystery
Subplots: Thriller, Romance
Series: The Naturals #1
Published: 2013
Hook:
Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.
What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.
Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.
Overall Book Rating: 8.9/10
I would obviously recommend this book
Review: I’m constantly hearing this book called the “YA criminal minds” and I thinks that’s an AMAZING description of this book. This book was well written and had a GRIPPING plot. ALSO, at the end, I was so surprised (but in a “wow I never expected that” way not a “no way, that makes no sense” way). The characters were entertaining and I LOVED not only the main character, but also the side characters. They all had a TON of unique and well built personality. The setting was pretty good too, but nothing I’m crazy excited over. I LOVED how the POV shifted to the murderer too!! It was such a unique way to write the book (it explained things just enough to be clear the killer is a psycho and give a few clues, but without giving away who they are). Overall, I really liked this book (ESPECIALLY the characters and plot), and really don’t have any complaints 😊.
Main Characters
Cassandra Hobbes- Cassie is the main character of this book. She is seventeen. She’s a Profiler (she can basically look at someone and see the little things they do and decide things about them: job, family, personality, wants, interests). She is kind and truly wants to make people happy.
Dean Redding- Dean is eighteen, and is also a Profiler. He pretends he is the person he is profiling in order to truly understand them. He struggles to get close to people because he thinks he will hurt them.
Lia Zhang- Lia is seventeen. She is basically a human lie detector. She can also effortlessly lie, and often uses this to mask her real emotions. She also had a VERY rough childhood.
Michael Townsend- Michael is seventeen. He can read others’ emotions. Michael rarely (if ever) shares his true emotions. He is daring, and sometimes, stupid with his actions. He tends to purposefully rub people the wrong way, but in reality has a caring side as well.
Sloane Tavish- Sloane is sixteen. She’s basically a human wikipedia. She is constantly overflowing with facts, statistics, and data. She can also remember (almost) everything she sees and hears. She is really sweet, but sometimes insecure.
Character Rating: 10/10
Setting-
This book takes place just outside of Washington D.C. for the majority of book, but starts in Colorado.
Setting Rating: 8.6/10
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Jennifer Lynn Barnes (who mostly goes by Jen) is the author of more than a dozen critically acclaimed young adult novels. She has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science, including graduate degrees from Cambridge University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in 2012. Jen wrote her first published novel when she was nineteen-years-old and sold her first five books while still in college. In additional to writing YA novels, Jen has also written original pilot scripts for television networks like USA and MTV, and she is one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of fandom and the cognitive science of fiction and the imagination more broadly. Jen is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she holds a dual appointment in Psychology and Professional Writing.
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