JENNIFER LYNN BARNES
(Book 1 in The Naturals)
Synopsis:
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.
Content:
Language: Insults about being a prostitute (never directly said to any characters on-page, but talked about in past and in certain chapters written from the killer's perspective)
Violence: This book is about serial killers, so there is some violence. Cassie's mother was murdered when she was younger and there are descriptions of all the blood in the room. There are descriptions of other crime scenes of of some bodies that have been brutally mutilated (including the skin of their faces having been cut off) but it isn't too gory. There are also a few mentions of a possible motivation for the killer being sexual assault and talk of abusive pasts.
Sex: A few chaste kisses (not very detailed, with one more so towards the end), a couple of references to sex, brief mentions of sexual assault and a teen pregnancy (not involving any of the main characters). There's a bit of a love triangle among Cassie and two of her fellow Naturals, Michael and Dean.
LGBTQ: Not present
My Review: I did not go in expecting to like this one as much as I did. I personally thought the twist was satisfying (though there was one briefly touched on part that didn't make much sense) and I really wanted to see how it ended. I really love Sherlock Holmes and while Cassie is nowhere close to anything like that masterpiece of a character, it was still fun to be back in the world of criminals and detective-like characters.