Fall Reading 2013 The Naturals

Jennifer Lynn Barnes tells the story of teenagers with incredible perception, "Naturals," who are recruited by the FBI. The plan is to hone their natural gifts and create incredible agents, a real asset to the Bureau. Of course with teenagers you have hormones and rebellion and drama. And when you're dealing with teenagers who have also had some sort of tragedy or trauma in their past, you can count on an extra dose of personality quirks. Cassie is recruited due to her ability to profile people and she learns there's another Natural like her named Dean. Michael can intuit people's emotions. Lia is a walking lie detector and Sloane is a genius with math and patterns.

If you took a couple of teens with Monk's ability to read the clues in a scene and combined them with a teenage girl version of Charlie from Numb3rs, you are starting to get the picture of the team. Anyone who enjoys detective dramas, police procedurals, or thrillers will probably enjoy this story. There are plenty of surprises and tense moments to keep you from putting it down until you reach the end.  Barnes also leaves enough untold that this could easily lead into an entire series with these characters. Due to the graphic descriptions of crime scenes, this would probably be best for teens and older readers. Here's a trailer for the book.

I read an e-book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.