The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. 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.

Think The Mentalist meets Pretty Little Liars—Jennifer Lynn Barnes's The Naturals is a gripping psychological thriller with killer appeal, a to-die-for romance, and the bones of a gritty and compelling new series.

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Why I Picked It Up

I've been a longtime fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes, way back in her midlist days, and The Naturals draws from her extensive psychological knowledge in such an appealing way. I reference her work nearly constantly, as she's a cognitive scientist who spent years researching and teaching about the psychology of fiction and fandom, often layering her theories into her work to make it more gripping to reluctant readers.

It works, which is why she's experienced phenomenal commercial success with her most recent series The Inheritance Games, and The Naturals hit the NYT bestseller list 13+ years after its release. Unreal, and so deserved.

JLB's books are punchy, angsty, funny, twisty—consumable but with a lot of cleverness and smarts, so you know everything on the page is deeply considered and whittled down to what's effective.

I was in the mood for this type of witty thriller recently so devoured the series again. A few years back, this was also the book that got me to watch Criminal Minds (TV) for the first time, aligning with books I've loved like The Conditions of Will and A Study in Charlotte.

Characters

Each of JLB's narrators are similarly sharp and capable and amusing. In this series vs. her others, each of the "found family" members of this ragtag group of teens has some skeletons in their closets that forced them to develop their skillsets—lie detection, reading emotions, skill with numbers and statistics, criminal profiling.

One aspect that makes JLB's storytelling fantastic—beyond craft advice I could listen to forever, like playing with the gaps in a narrative or generating red herrings for yourself or her famous id list—is that her archetypes and the differences between them are always neat and clean even when the emotions surrounding them are messy. Characters stay in their lanes which makes the contrast and tension sharp, but not at the cost of dimensionality. They still feel fully-fledged.

By that, I mean each character handles situations differently because of their preexisting lens, and the clarity in their characterization makes them easy to identify and keep track of. The reading experience ends up being relatively effortless because it's obvious how much of their behavior is mapped to genuine internal logic. That backend work makes the emotional beats land harder.

Plot & Pacing

JLB's books are intelligent because she is, so they're also just fun. She's excellent at building out an addictive mystery. The scenes flow together seamlessly but still feel punctuated and snappy. The overall effect is polished and punchy.

When following a case in The Naturals series, the plot is always harrowing. She's not afraid to get appropriately grim and violent in the details (for teenagers), but she can also be goofy, because they're teenagers. The psychological explanations in parallel are clear, interesting, and well-layered.

In each book, I've never guessed the culprit. And the angst is fabulous.

Overall Thoughts

I really love this series, and how easy it is to sink into. So many of her writing rules unfold in my head when reading because she is simply that good, and I'm so happy that her books are really taking off the way they deserve. In later installments of the series, some of the plot can start to feel a bit convoluted for my personal taste in scale—so I reread the first three books and skipped the fourth—but The Naturals is fun and fascinating and worth devouring.

For fans of:

The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter; A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro; The Conditions of Will by Jessa Hastings; Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson; A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson; Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis.