The Naturals

The Naturals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
New York: Hyperion
2013
308 pages



This book will remove many of you of Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore, reviewed in this blog. This story is also about a sassy psychic teen girl who is asked to assist the FBI with their investigations. This book also has cute boy protagonists who are also helping the FBI in various ways. This book, however, has a very real, versus supernatural, criminal.

This red-headed psychic is seventeen-year-old Cassie. She can read people by observing even the minutest details and can tell all sorts of things about that person's life, personality, and behavior. Cassie lives with her grandmother on her father's side. Her father works for the government and is often gone, and her mother, a "psychic" performer was mysteriously murdered in her dressing room several years before this story takes place. Cassie was the one to discover the crime scene and has been haunted by the experience. Her mother's body was never found, and the case never solved.

 One day at work, she meets a young man who tells her about the special program run by the FBI for people like her. Cassie is interested in the program, especially as it might help her figure out what happened to her mother. She decides to  join the other "naturals" in Washington, D.C. to help solve cold cases. Needless to say, her grandmother is not happy with her moving away, but Agent Briggs, who is in charge of the program, convinces them that it would be a great opportunity for Cassie.

In D.C., Cassie meets other young people involved in the program. She is attracted to Michael, the young man who first approached her about it, and Dean, a young man with a tragic back story. She starts her work with Agent Lacey Locke,  a determined and ambitious woman who heads up the profiler section of the special program.

Soon after Cassie settles in, she and the other teens learn about a horrible case that Agents Locke and Briggs are working on. Cassie begins to see similarities between the victims and then it becomes evident that there is some connection to her own mother's death.

This story was fairly entertaining. I enjoyed the dynamics between the young teens involved in the program. The ending was a bit of a surprise and I thought there should have been more clues. I wont' give it away, but I thought it was a little unrealistic. There would have been signs to point us and Cassie, who is very good at reading people, to the actual criminal in the case. It also seemed a bit coincidental, but I won't tell you more because that would give too much away.

I think those of you who enjoy watching Psych, The Mentalist, and CSI will enjoy this book. There is a little bit of everything in this book for you: romance, mystery, horror, and even humor.

Spirit and Dust

New Hardback Cover

Old Cover

Spirit and Dust
by Rosemary Clement-Moore
New York: Delacorte Press
2013
387 pages

Which cover do you like better?

I used to watch the television series Medium and have in fact been watching it again on Netflix. When I read the blurb about this book, I thought immediately of that program. This is a teen version of that basic premise, the psychic who helps law enforcement solve crimes. It is also book two, following Texas Gothic, about the Goodnight Clan. I didn't know this when I started reading, but Spirit and Dust is a good stand-alone book, so it won't matter so much if you read this one first, as I did.

Daisy Goodnight is a very modern teenager in many ways. She has dyed red hair, likes Goth clothing, and has an "kick-ass" attitude. But she is also very connected with the past. She is from a long family line of psychics who can talk to spirits, or remnants. These are not the souls of the dearly departed, but leftover fragments of the dead, associated with places they had been or where they died, or things they had touched. Daisy is asked by FBI Agent Taylor to assist with the murder of the driver of a kidnapped teen. Another wrinkle to the problem is that the teen is the daughter of a mobster, Devlin Maguire. Daisy is able to talk to the remnant of the driver but all she learns that there was something unusual and disturbing about this death.

Anubis, Egyptian God
of the Afterlife

Soon afterwards, Daisy is herself kidnapped and taken to the home of the crime boss dad. He wants Daisy to get busy and find his daughter. He offers the service of Carson, a young man who knows a lot about Alexis Maguire's habits, and a witch named Lauren. Lauren puts a binding spell on Daisy so she can't just hightail it out of there at the first opportunity. With Carson's help, Daisy and Carson escape and follow up a lead provided by Alexis's dead grandmother to the cemetery where they find a mysterious flash drive. Daisy now finds herself on the run with Carson, but the binding spell is still activated and Daisy must continue searching for Alexis.

All is not as it seems in this quick-moving, intense horror thriller. In searching for clues to the Alexis' disappearance, we encounter many dead people including archaeologists, Cleopatra, and the Egyptian God Anubis. Carson and Daisy's adventures lead them to several interesting places in the Midwest, including the St. Louis Art Museum, the Oriental Institute, and my favorite, the Field Museum. I was surprised to find out the truth about the Maguires and the part they play in Daisy's misadventures. Daisy is a likeable character, but I don't think her talent is thoroughly explored or explained very well. Perhaps if I had read the first book, I would understand her better. She has an "attitude" and is rather mouthy, or "kick-ass" as she puts it, which is somewhat explained by her age. I guess I myself sympathize with Agent Gerard, the agent who doesn't want to put up with the teen medium's smart aleck opinions on everything, since teen attitudes like this can get tiresome after awhile, at least to this mother of teenagers.

Sue the T-Rex, Field Museum, Chicago

My favorite part of this book, however, was not the spooky ghost bits with the spirits or the Jackal, but the descriptions of Sue, the Tyrannosaurus and the Field Museum. I love Sue, as most visitors do, and have marvelled at how large she is and how sharp her teeth look. And when Daisy reanimates Sue's bones so that she can chase down the bad guys, I can't help but think of the final scenes of the movie Jurassic Park, in which the T-Rex is running around inside the Park's welcome center. That would be a truly horrifying experience!