It takes a great deal of suspension of disbelief to read this book and I'm not talking about the preposterousness of the idea that children-teenagers, can be FBI criminal investigators. This book is Criminal Minds fanfiction, for the under-15 crowd. 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. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.
Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head-and under her skin. 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. 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. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. Some parts are suspenseful and creepy, but there's a lot of information that pops up out of the blue, leaving readers wondering if they missed something.Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. The Naturals is trying too hard to be a teen version of Silence of the Lambs. However, she doesn't convey how the FBI really works and that being a criminal profiler takes more than just reading books at the library and checking people out at the mall. It's predictable and full of cliches (a love triangle, insta-love, missing parents) and has unlikable characters.īarnes seems to have done some research into the mind of a serial killer. Readers may suspend disbelief for the sake of pure entertainment, but the novel's all over the place. At one point, Cassie wonders if the FBI even knows the "Naturals" program exists, except for the two agents who recruited her.
The big one: It's hard to accept the premise that the FBI would hire a bunch of kids (who aren't even attending high school) to solve crimes, especially ones involving serial killers. The concept behind THE NATURALS is kind of interesting, but it doesn't work for various reasons.
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