Friday Memes: The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

 Happy Friday!

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader. She asks that the first sentence is posted along with the author and title of the book and the reader's initial thoughts on the sentence, the book, or anything else it inspires. 

Carrie at Reading Is My Superpower.org also provides a linky for sharing first lines and connecting with others. This meme asks that the chosen books be PG or marked as Mature if they are not. 

Beginning:

The hours were bad. The tips were worse, and the majority of my coworkers definitely left something to be desired, but c'est la vie, que sera sera, insert foreign language cliche of your choice here.

Friday 56:

"Cassie it is, then," she replied. "Briggs tells me you're one of mine."

One of hers?

Michael filled in the blank. "A profiler."

This week I am spotlighting The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. I've had the audiobook on my stack since December 19, 2024. I also bought the Kindle copy and the rest of the series recently. I vaguely remember reading this one when it was first published in 2013 but wanted to revisit it and read the rest of the series after it was brought to mind because of someone on my Facebook reels. 

Here is the description from Amazon:

Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people, piecing together the tiniest details to know who a person is, and what they want. But it’s not a skill she takes seriously until the FBI come knocking—they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teens to crack infamous cold cases, and they want her to join.

What Cassie doesn't realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides. Sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own, she quickly realizes no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. Emotion-reader Michael is a wild card—and far too perceptive for Cassie’s good. The resident deception-detector is a pathological liar, and the program’s perky, blonde statistician is far better with numbers than with people. And then there’s Dean—a profiler like Cassie but with a much darker gift.
 
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.

Perfect for fans of Criminal Minds and Holly Jackson, Jennifer Lynn Barnes delivers a suspense-ridden psychological thriller with killer appeal, a love triangle to die for, and a gorgeous new design that will stand out on any shelf.