Review: The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Summary from Goodreads:
Cassie Hobbes is not like most teenagers. Most teenagers don't lose their mother in a bloody, unsolved kidnapping. Most teenagers can't tell who you are, where you're from and how you're likely to behave within moments of meeting you. And most teenagers don't get chosen to join The Naturals.

Identified by the FBI as uniquely gifted, Cassie is recruited to an elite school where a small number of teens are trained to hone their exceptional abilities.

For Cassie, trying to make friends with the girls, and to figure out the two very different, very hot boys, is challenging enough. But when a serial killer begins recreating the details of her mother's horrific crime scene, she realises just how dangerous life in The Naturals could be...

Holy smokes! There was a lot to like about this book. Cassie is a Natural, she has the ability to read people, paint a picture of them, profile them. She's contacted by the FBI and discovers there's a program for kids like her who are Naturals. We're introduced to Michael the emotion reader, Sloane the information bank, Lia the human lie detector and Dean, another profiler.

The best thing about this book was no doubt the mystery and suspense. We are constantly reminded through Cassie's nightmares and flashbacks of the time she found her mother missing and her mother's blood covering the floor and walls of her dressing room. There has been no progress with the case but a string of recent murders seem to be related to her mother's case. It was really interesting when Cassie started off with exercises to sharpen her Natural abilities; spying on people at the mall and creating their profiles and grouping crime-scene photos of victims by identifying the 'signature' of the killers. Cassie finds herself in danger when she delves into an ongoing case of a murderer who has been killing victims resembling her mother or killing victims and making them resemble her mother.

The writing and the choice words to mislead us from the culprit was excellent. I frequently suspected someone only to trust them again and point my finger at someone else. For the last fifth of the book, I had to cover the words so my eyes didn't skip ahead and spoil things. I was constantly on the edge of my seat and hit with spine-chilling revelation after revelation. There were some good lighter-hearted moments and romance throughout the book, which was a good break from all the seriousness. I really enjoyed this book!