Jennifer Lynn BarnesYoung Adult · Mystery·b. 1984
The Naturals
Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes has a gift: she reads people. From the smallest details of dress, speech, and behaviour she can reconstruct who a person is and what they want — a talent shaped by the unsolved murder of her own mother. That ability draws the attention of a secret FBI program that recruits gifted teenagers as "Naturals": young people with exceptional, innate skills in profiling, lie detection, statistics, and emotion-reading, trained to work cold cases the Bureau can't crack.
Living in a house with four other prodigies — including two very different boys who complicate her life in different ways — Cassie throws herself into the work. But when a killer begins staging murders that echo her mother's case, the exercise stops being academic. The killer knows the Naturals exist, and Cassie is the target.
The first book in Jennifer Lynn Barnes's bestselling series pairs a fast, twisty serial-killer mystery with the emotional pull of found family and first romance. It is a young-adult thriller about the cost of understanding the darkest parts of human nature.
How it reads
Prose complexity 4/10
Content warnings (2)
ViolenceDeath Of A Parent
- I read The Naturals and I completely understand the hype now 👀📚✨ This book follows a group of teenagers with unique abilities who are recruited by the FBI to help solve cold cases and dangerous investigations. But when a new serial killer case becomes more personal than expected, the tension starts rising really fast and suddenly no one feels completely safe anymore. I went into this expecting a fun YA mystery, but it ended up being so much more addictive than I thought. The criminal minds vibe was honestly one of my favorite parts, and I loved following the investigation while trying to figure everything out alongside the characters. What made the story even more interesting was the group itself. Each of them has their own special ability, personality, and backstory, which made the dynamics feel really unique and entertaining to follow 👀 The short chapters made this so easy to binge read, and every time I thought I understood where the story was going, something new happened that made me question everything again 😭 Overall this was such a fun, fast-paced thriller and I’m definitely continuing the series because I already need more 🫶📖
- Não exatamente atingiu minhas expectativas, porque pelas indicações intensas que eu vi, eu estava esperando algo vibe MAPBG, mas eu gostei bastante, foi divertidinho.