Twelve (The Naturals, #4.5)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Cassie Hobbes has been working with the FBI since she was a teenager. Now twenty-three years old, she and her fellow Naturals have taken over running the program that taught them everything they know. As a unit, they're responsible for identifying new Naturals—and solving particularly impossible cases. When their latest case brings back a ghost from their past, Cassie and the other Naturals find themselves racing against the clock—and reliving their own childhood traumas.

In a small, coastal town in Maine, there has been a rash of teen suicides—or at least, that's what the police believe. Mackenzie McBride, age twelve, thinks differently. Desperate to make herself heard, she stands at the top of a lighthouse, threatening to jump... unless the FBI agents who rescued her from a kidnapper at age six come to hear her out.

Enter the Naturals. It doesn't take Cassie long to realize that Mackenzie isn't bluffing: she truly is convinced that the suicides are murder, and she really will jump if she can't get the FBI to believe her. To the outside world, Mackenzie is nothing more than a traumatized child. But so was Cassie, once upon a time. So were Michael, Dean, Sloane, Lia, and Celine. With a storm rolling in off the ocean and Mackenzie's position becoming more precarious by the moment, the Naturals have very little time to get to the truth about the deaths—and about twelve-year-old Mackenzie McBride.

• ASIN: B075573YK6
• Publish Date: 29 November 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Curtis Brown Studios
• Format: eBook (Kindle)
• Pages: 138
• Language: English

Reviews

"Dean and I had always acknowledged that to do what we did, a person needed a bit of monster in them." (Cassandra Hobbes)

In Twelve, we meet Mackensie McBride, a girl that The Naturals rescued after she was kidnapped in Killer Instinct. Mackensie believes that the string of teen suicides that have been occurring in her town are actually murders.

Twelve is a short novella and I didn't expect the mystery and psychological aspects to be complex and intense, but it's still quite interesting to see things from a killer's PoV. I was also trying to solve the mystery and figure out what happened to the teenagers and who was responsible. The resolution of the plot is quite short, but it's a solid one that makes a lot of sense.

It's also awesome to see where The Naturals are five years later. Cassie has been keeping The Naturals program alive with Lia's help and Michael, Dean and Sloane are FBI agents-in-training. I love the camaraderie that The Naturals team have with each other and I wish I could have seen more of it in Twelve. However, I couldn't believe that after five years, the main characters have not grown or changed in anyway. I'm not the same person I was five years ago and I don't believe that a character can be exactly the same five years later. We also get glimpses into the lives of The Naturals when they were twelve years old and we see just how dominant their natural abilities were at the age of twelve. Also, I'm so happy about the relationship between Briggs and Sterling!

It was nice to be back with The Naturals and see how much their lives have progressed in five years. Twelve reminds me of the first two books in The Naturals series. It's fun and entertaining, but ultimately unmemorable.

""Personally" Lia commented, "I find normal overrated.""