The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Reading Blog / Book Journal

Source: Purchased

Rating: 5/5

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is the author of The Inheritance Games series which I'm sure most of you have heard about. If you haven't read that series, please do. I knew she had a backlist of titles and I had a few of them on my wishlist. When Larry Reads on Youtube recommended this series, I thought I would give it a try. It was the encouragement that I needed to try more of her books. This series is quoted to be a "Criminal Minds" for a young adult audience. I'll admit, I've never watched Criminal Minds, I don't watch tv, nonetheless, I was very entertained and I highly recommend this series.

In The Naturals, we are introduced to Cassie, a 17-year-old who is great at reading people. What do I mean by that? She's a profiler. She had to learn young while trying to survive an unconventional life with her mom. Her mom was a fake psychic, they were always on the move, and Cassie helped decide who she could approach for money. Over the years, Cassie has honed in on her natural ability to profile people. After her mother's murder, Cassie has to live with family she doesn't really know, and has no clue who killed her mother. When Cassie catches the attention of the FBI, she believes this might be her chance to solve her mother's case one day. We learn that the FBI has a small program for teenagers who have these natural skills, and the FBI hopes to use these teenagers to solve cold case files. Their natural abilities cannot be denied, and need to be developed in the right way. In addition to Cassie; we have another profiler named Dean, Michael who can read people's moods, Lia is a deception detector, and Sloane who's a whiz with statistics and probabilities. Together these five teenagers work to solve cold cases, and when a new killer strikes the Naturals are brought in to assist. 

This book was a lot of fun; the characters were great, the found family trope is one of my favorites and it delivered. I jumped into the second book pretty soon after and enjoyed the character growth. It was really fast-paced, and while it is geared toward a younger audience and I don't read a lot of young adult books - I really enjoyed it. I was really intrigued about the character's natural abilities and why they've had to adapt to these abilities. Just like Cassie, the others have their own backstory as well. Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a fantastic writer, and I can't wait to continue this series as well as her other titles. 

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