Category: Mystery/Horror

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

This was a great mystery book! It started off quickly and was a fast read. The book follows three teenagers (all from the viewpoint of the main character Kira) as they help search for a lost little girl in the forest and mountains in Sierra Glades National Park. All three teens have been training a dog and are waiting to test with FEMA to become certified search and rescue partners. They receive an urgent request to jump in a case of a missing little girl despite not being certified yet. The mystery of the missing girl turns into more than they realize and brings back horrifying, repressed memories within Kira. Is there a connection between the missing little girl and Kira’s past?

Kira Bennett’s earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her. Adopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search and rescue. Together with Cady’s son, Jude, and their neighbor, Free, Kira works alongside Cady to train the world’s most elite search-and-rescue dogs. Someday, all three teenagers hope to put their skills to use, finding the lost and bringing them home.

When Cady’s estranged father, the enigmatic Bales Bennett, tracks his daughter down and asks for her help in locating a missing child — one of several visitors who has disappeared in the Sierra Glades National Park in the past twelve months — the teens find themselves on the front lines sooner than they could have ever expected. As the search through seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of unbridled wilderness intensifies, Kira becomes obsessed with finding the missing child. She knows all too well what it’s like to be lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival, alone.

But this case isn’t simple. There is more afoot than a single missing girl, and Kira’s memories threaten to overwhelm her at every turn. As the danger mounts and long-held family secrets come to light, Kira is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her adopted family, her true nature, and her past.

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Book #1: The Naturals

Brace yourselves ~ this book is intense. Some moments of the book literally put you into the mind of a serial killer! Naturals are teenagers who show strong ability for particular skills that can be helpful to the FBI. Skills such as being so good at lying, a lie detector test wouldn’t work on them and they can identify when someone is lying. Another whose memory allows everything she’s read or seen to be retained. A very small, private school has been started to train select teens to hone their skills and help solve cases. As you get to know the main character Cassie, and the other fellow students, no one is who you think and they all have secrets.

Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want.  But, it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie. 

What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And 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.

Book 2: Killer Instinct

The second book picks up about 6 weeks after the first book. The Naturals are continuining to review cold cases, when a copy cat killer of Dean’s father appears. The Naturals have been told they cannot work on an active case and are trying to keep Dean from getting involved, but secretly want to help solve this case faster than ever before more people die. This installement delves further into the backstory behind our main characters while providing some great twists!!

Seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes has a gift for profiling people. Her talent has landed her a spot in an elite FBI program for teens with innate crime-solving abilities, and into some harrowing situations. After barely escaping a confrontation with an unbalanced killer obsessed with her mother’s murder, Cassie hopes she and the rest of the team can stick to solving cold cases from a distance.

But when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of Dean’s incarcerated father-a man he’d do anything to forget. Forced deeper into a murderer’s psyche than ever before, will the Naturals be able to outsmart the enigmatic killer’s brutal mind games before this copycat twists them into his web for good?

Book #3: All In (My favorite so far!)

Three casinos. Three bodies. Three days.

After a string of brutal murders in Las Vegas, Cassie Hobbes and the Naturals are called in to investigate. But even with the team’s unique profiling talents, these murders seem baffling: unlike many serial killers, this one uses different methods every time. All of the victims were killed in public, yet the killer does not show up on any tape. And each victim has a string of numbers tattooed on their wrist. Hidden in the numbers is a code—and the closer the Naturals come to unraveling the mystery, the more perilous the case becomes.

Meanwhile, Cassie is dealing with an equally dangerous and much more painful mystery. For the first time in years, there’s been a break in her mother’s case. As personal issues and tensions between the team mount, Cassie and the Naturals will be faced with impossible odds—and impossible choices.

By Margaret Peterson Haddix

I thoroughly enjoyed this book!!! It takes twist you don’t expect and leaves you constantly wanting to learn more. This is a great mystery book and I loved how it switched points of view each chapter between the three siblings, yet continued the story forward! There was never a slow moment. The ending leaves you hooked and needing more answers, so you’ll definitely want to roll right into book two: The Deceivers.

What makes you you?

The Greystone kids thought they knew. Chess has always been the protector over his younger siblings, Emma loves math, and Finn does what Finn does best—acting silly and being adored. They’ve been a happy family, just the three of them and their mom.

But everything changes when reports of three kidnapped children reach the Greystone kids, and they’re shocked by the startling similarities between themselves and these complete strangers. The other kids share their same first and middle names. They’re the same ages. They even have identical birthdays. Who, exactly, are these strangers?

Before Chess, Emma, and Finn can question their mom about it, she takes off on a sudden work trip and leaves them in the care of Ms. Morales and her daughter, Natalie. But puzzling clues left behind lead to complex codes, hidden rooms, and a dangerous secret that will turn their world upside down.