This book was brilliant!! I had seen people recommending it online over the past few months, and was quite intrigued, so when I finished this book (the first in a 4.5 part series) I was very glad that it met my expectations.
If you’ve watched the TV show ‘Criminal Minds’ then this book would be great for you. A group of teenagers were recruited join the somewhat secret FBI program for ‘naturals’. Naturals meaning that these teenagers had extreme abilities that even some of the most experienced people in their specific fields could never dream of. This has come as a result of their unusual upbringings.
Cassie and Dean are natural profilers. Sloane is an analytical/statistical genius. Lia is a natural lie detector. Michael is a natural emotion reader. My favourite character was Sloane but they were all written extremely well and had complex backstories.
The case that they had to solve in this book was quite creepy and I got hooked immediately. The plot twists kept on coming, which I genuinely appreciated as it made the book unpredictable and something new. Cassie being new to the house meant seeing a lot of new relationships form, which was interesting because their abilities would often get in the way and make things complicated.
Cassie was somewhat of a boring character (in my opinion) and I did feel that the book coming from her point of view meant some bias in certain points. I didn’t really like how she treated some of the others, for example Sloane and Michael, but I was invested in what happened to her towards the end of the book. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of her love triangle with Dean and Michael, I felt it was unnecessary and rushed, she’d been there for a day and was already thinking about romantic relationships.
Dean was an intriguing character because when he profiled, he looked at it from the perspective of a killer, this was because his dad was one and he was forced to watch. Lia was great, her ability to detect and tell lies at ease made for some funny moments when tension was felt within the story. Michael seemed to overcompensate a bit by trying to get everyone to like him, but I found him an okay character and I enjoyed his jokes.
Sloane, my favourite character, I felt quite bad for. She was often left out and forgotten, which I don’t think made much sense with her being probably the most helpful person in the program. I also felt that I could relate to her slightly, I’m not a genius like her, but the awkward way in which she interacted with people reminded me a bit of myself.
Overall, despite my somewhat negative comments on certain aspects of the book, I loved it. Every page I turned I was waiting for the reveal, but the build-up was written so well that I ended up reading it in a day, and then moving straight onto the next. The plot was truly fantastic and I think this is one of my favourite series’ and I will definitely read this again at some point.
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