After stumbling upon the brutal scene of her mother’s murder when she was twelve, Cassie Hobbes spends the next five years relearning how to live normally. But normal isn’t something that comes easy for someone like Cassie; she spent the first twelve years of her life on the road helping her so-called psychic mother con people out of money.

For this seventeen year old, figuring out people the same way others would put together a puzzle comes as naturally as breathing. From a random stranger passing on the streets to the family members she sees every day, Cassie’s brain can’t help but set up a detailed mental profile for everyone she encounters.

When what seemed like a chance encounter with a mysterious boy at a restaurant leaves Cassie with a summons to meet with an FBI agent, her life is flipped upside down once again. Against her better judgement, Cassie agrees to the meeting, and is given an offer she can’t refuse– the chance to finally find a place where she belongs, and a way to find justice for people who had suffered like her.

In Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Naturals, readers follow Cassie and four other charismatic and naturally gifted teenagers as they learn to work together to solve the FBI’s cold cases in the Naturals program. Here Cassie learns to use her profiling gift to delve into the mind of a killer, and readers are brought right along with her as she discovers just what makes a psychopath tick. Her companions in this program each bring a new skill set to the table: a human lie detector, a boy who can read a person’s emotions like a book, a girl with a calculator for a brain, and a boy who shares Cassie’s knack for profiling.

As the story progresses, what started as harmless behind the scenes work for the group of teens takes a dangerous turn when a serial killer starts to target one of their own. It doesn’t take long for their theoretical training sessions to become all too real, and no amount of protection from their FBI handlers can keep them away from the action. The stakes are higher for Cassie than any of the other Naturals, and she will stop at nothing to catch the person behind the killings.

Critics have called the book the Criminal Minds of the YA world, and I can confidently say that Barnes lived up to those expectations with this novel. I was immediately drawn into Cassie’s unique perspective of the world, and the fast pace of the novel kept me on my toes until the very end. Barnes created the perfect balance between romance, humor, and thrill in her book, sweeping readers along in a way that makes them experience every heart-stopping terror, every infuriating dead-end, and every touching moment of love right along with them. This novel, followed by the three companion books in the series, will absolutely go down as one of my favorite YA reads of all time.

The Naturals is a 2017 Abraham Lincoln nominee.