Review: The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Title: The Naturals
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release date: November 5th 2013
Source: Netgalley
Format: egalley

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

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.

This book is a police-thriller and I really liked it because it reminded me of the TV series Criminal Minds and the Mentalist.

The Naturals tells the story of Cassie a 16 year old girl, she´s very observant, she can see a certain person and just know what he or she likes, she usually takes it as a game and she doesn´t discuss her ability with anyone, that is until  she´s recruited for a FBI special program because of this skill, she´s a natural profiler; since the FBI has a program that recruits teenagers with some special natural gift, to help with some research of cold cases. Among them is Michael a guy who can read your emotions and sometimes uses them against yo ; Dean another guy with the same gift that Cassie, he´s a profiler, Lia who is a pathological liar and can also detect when you're lying and Sloane is very good with numbers, statistics and overall is a walking encyclopedia.

Most of the book is told from the point of view of Cassie, but we also have every few chapters the point of view of the suspect or killer. When Cassie begins her training with Dean and an FBI agent and they´re talking about a case, they often refer to the suspect as UNSUB and when they talk about what happen in such case they use the words you or I, when they´re recreating a murder, that part of the book gave me goosebumps because Dean almost always takes the side or role of the murderer and refers to everything as I did this, I did that, while Cassie uses the word you did this and you did that and sometimes Cassie gets on the place of the victim and then she use the word I did this, etc. it was a little disturbing "watching" them interact as the killer and the victim, these parts really gave me chills because while they´re analyzing photos and documents both of them get into the role of victim and suspect .

The main plot in the book is the case of a serial killer who inadvertently reaches the hands of Cassie and she is determined to participate in the research for personal reasons. There is a love triangle, but I really did not feel it very important in the main story.

Overall, it´s a good thriller novel that more than once gave me chills, it's very entertaining and has a good ending that I did not see coming for most of the book until about 5 seconds before it happened and never imagined the reasons why the killer was selecting that victims ... I liked that twist in the story. I really enjoyed this book and hope there is a sequel.

I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.