The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Gut Instinct Rating - 4

Characters - 4.5

Believability for type and topics - 5

Similarity to other books - 5

Writing Style - 4.5

Excitement Factor - 5

Story Line - 5

Title Relevance - 5

Cover art - 5

To read or not to read? Like crime? You'll love this!

Movie? None, sadly.

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.17. I think it was more deserving of a 4.89.

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Published on November 5, 2013

Pages: 308

Publishing Company: Disney-Hyperion

Number of books by author: 27 books; 5 in the series

Genre: Mystery, YA Fiction, Thriller, Contemporary, Romance

This book has been on my list for two years, so more or less, I was expecting it to be a total flop. If you've read Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers trilogy, this is all you. If you're a Criminal Minds junkie, this is all you. If you just happen to love twists, turns, and crime, this. is. you.

This book was incredibly well done. As a Criminal Minds nutjob, I'm always skeptical when I read crime books because I know the writers of CM are always plugging facts from true-crime, and they're working with real, live, BAU agencies and former agents to really get the writing correct. For this book to have been as detailed, and the writer to be educated about the BAU was awesome!

I know, I know... crime isn't for everyone, but this book is super well done... especially because it's a YA read, the gore-and-guts aren't too bad. I'm definitely going to be reading on to find out what happens to Cassie and the rest of the Naturals. The characters weren't exactly who I would've liked.... but, at the end of the day, the pool of Naturals is small, and to try and diversify them may have made me think the book was less believable than it was at its current state.

The writing style was a bit strange, too. We had this chapters that popped up from time to time, written for You. Well, we already knew who You was, so the mystery there wasn't necessary. But it was so ominous, that you really didn't get to enjoy it. We were just stuck with about 15-20 pages of letters (I'm still not sure if this was a narrator perspective, or if this was a letter, but I'm going with a letter.) that felt out of place, because they weren't addressed. They just were.

Otherwise, this book was top of the line, and despite my crime reading slump, I still managed to read this book in very few sittings. Read it. Because we now need this on Netflix. Pronto.