The Naturals

“You’ll love her, or you’ll kill her, but either way, she’s going to be yours.”

Brief Synopsis:

From the beginning, we learn two things about Cassie’s mom: that she was a phony psychic, and that she’s dead. Cassie picked up plenty of things from her mother along the way, though, including how her mother reads people. Cassie actually does really well at it, and when she’s shipped off to live with her father’s huge Italian family that she’s not totally comfortable with, she keeps this intuition about her, even while working her crappy diner job. At said job, a country club looking kid comes in and seems to study Cassie the way that she studies others. When he leaves, he leaves behind a business card for the freakin’ FBI. Apparently, they want Cassie.

She has no idea whether or not this has to do with her mother’s murder, but she agrees to meet with the agent. The same country club boy, Michael, is there when she gets to the appointment and leads her to the agent, who tells her that, if she’s interested, they want her in a new program where they train obviously talented young students called Naturals. He also tells her that it actually has nothing to do with her mom’s murder, but Cassie’s already pulled into the world and agrees to leave everything behind to move from Denver to Washington to be part of this program. She’s whisked away, and is pulled into a world full of really interesting characters. The other students in her program all have things about them. You have Lia, the Natural liar, Michael, the emotion-reader, her roommate Sloane, who’s a wiz with everything to do with numbers and probabilities, and Dean. He’s a Natural intuitive reader like Cassie, and he doesn’t seem pleased that she’s there.

Cassie begins her training with the Naturals, and in the meantime, the story is showing us a serial killer in the background, simply named “You”. This killer is slowly making their way through women, but he’s always chasing a high that he just can’t get back from his initial kill. I mean, it’s pretty obvious from the start, but it doesn’t take long for us to figure out that this killer is also now after Cassie. While she’s training, Cassie starts to get a little bit closer to everyone else in the house. She’s tasked with reading through old cases to start to get a feel for them, but when the one that watches them at the house leaves for the evening, the kids decide to play some truth or dare.

Of COURSE, Cassie gets dared by Lia to kiss Dean. She’s surprised that she’s not totally opposed to the idea anyway, and though the kiss is brief and pretty chaste, she feels a thrill from it. The night ends badly, with a question about “the bad seed” that tips Dean over the breaking point and he leaves, but Cassie can’t really forget about that kiss. She also can’t forget about how, when asked if the kiss made him jealous, Michael said that he gets even instead. They have a pool that Cassie really enjoys at night when she can’t sleep, and Michael ends up finding her out there and they start goofing around, throwing each other and dunking each other in the pool.. but Dean sees them and isn’t happy.

This doesn’t stop Michael from kissing her, but I’m not gonna lie. It kind of annoyed me, like he was just doing it to prove that he could or something? Verdict is still out there. Continuing to make her way through the case files, Cassie goes out nearby and reads outside, but some dude comes up and tries to start talking to her. Michael rescues her, and they’re reading peacefully until Cassie comes upon a name that’s really, really familiar to her. No, it’s not her mom. It’s Dean’s last name. Cassie connects the dots and runs back to the house to talk to Dean about his father being a serial killer, and how it really doesn’t change how she’s starting to feel or wanting to work with him, but Dean’s not really having it.

She and Michael make a break for the basement, which is really cool. It’s set up like a bunch of areas in movie sets to help out with profiling for cases, and it’s soundproof, so they’re setting off fireworks. Sloane finds them and tells them that she stole a USB from one of the detectives that trains them. They check it out and find out that the active case hits way too close to home for Cassie. A lot of them have ties to the psychic world, just like her mom, and a lot of them are either red-haired, or the killer dyes their hair. Convinced that this is connected to her mom, she finds Dean, they apologize to one another, and she dishes everything about her mother’s death and the case. He vows to help her.

However, they’re caught and Cassie’s told in no uncertain terms that if she continues to sniff around with an active case there will be major consequences. This changes when Cassie ends up with a gift addressed to her – and it’s a single lock of red hair. This is significant, as she and her mother (and me, aye!) both have red hair. At this point, nobody in the FBI can really deny that this is directly involving both Cassie and her mother’s death. Detail on her is upped tenfold, but when yet another gift makes its way through (a blonde lock this time) along with a photo showing a prominent man’s daughter held hostage, they know that the killer is baiting them and won’t let them keep Cassie away for long. She’s allowed to go to the most recent crime scene, where this girl was taken, to investigate and possibly lure the killer out. It’s a nightclub, and she brings Sloane and Dean.

Together, the three of them suss out some information on when this girl was taken, but more than that happens. Cassie finds a message from the murderer that leads them to another crime scene, another poor victim, and it’s an exact replica of her mother’s crime scene. Or is it? Sloane is able to use her so-insanely-quick-I-could-never mind to point out inconsistencies, and photos that come through later further prove that. What else the photos prove? That whoever recreated the scene, who’s doing these killings now, is a lot closer to Cassie and the rest of the Naturals than they thought. That’s because of the light switch, and the fact that there’s a smear of blood from when Cassie turned the light on to find her mother’s crime scene, sans body. Only someone that had meticulously studied the crime scene photos would’ve been able to include that detail.

Cassie calls Agent Locke, her mentor, and gives her the lowdown. Locke tells her that she and Dean need to leave, that there’s a safehouse and Dean’s the only one that she can trust with this. As she’s leaving, she has to hurt Michael’s feelings. This is awkward, considering that only moments before they’d been kissing… again. But she knows that Michael won’t let her leave if he’s catching on to what’s happening, even a little bit. She and Dean take off and end up at the safehouse, and Michael’s there. For one split second, Cassie believes that Michael’s been the one behind this all along. But she realizes that he didn’t believe her as much as she thought, and he risked his life to follow her.

It's then that he’s shot, and who’s behind the bullets? Agent Locke. Apparently, she’s been the one behind the murders this whole time, the one that’s been obsessed with getting close to Cassie. This is because Agent Locke is actually Cassie’s aunt, the one that her mother had abandoned when she was old enough to leave their abusive father behind. Over the years, Locke became resentful to Cassie’s mother and vowed to find her. Unfortunately, someone got to Cassie’s mom first and Locke has been forced to re-create her death over and over again instead, but now she’s wants Cassie. She either wants to kill her, or she wants her to join in on the macabre fun.

Michael’s awake, amazingly, but Locke doesn’t know it. Cassie uses some deference to make sure that Locke doesn’t see Michael slowly inching toward his gun, and together the two of them successfully take her down. Sadly, this does mean that Cassie watches her only living relative, that she knows of, on her mother’s side die in front of her. This also means that her mother’s killer is still out there. She doesn’t know who it is, she doesn’t know what to do with her feelings about Dean and Michael, but she does know that there’s no way she’s leaving the Naturals program without some answers.

My Rating; Y’all, Barnes did it again. I swear, this woman could write a takeout menu and I’d be enthralled by it. 8/10.

Devastation Rating:

So far, 5/10. Some of the deaths were gruesome and the story of Cassie’s family is truly a sad one, but I’m sure it’ll only amp up from here.

Favorite Quote(s):

“…because the next time my lips touch yours, the next time your hands are buried in my hair – the only person you’re going to be thinking about is me.”

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Until next time <3