The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Title: The Naturals
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Publisher: Hyperion
Rating: WARTY!

Obviously this is the start of a series because no one can write a one-off novel any more. Why would Big Publishing care about a single novel when they can find an endlessly repetitive trope? Sometimes series work, and the writer produces something that actually bears telling in more than one volume, but the fact that we see so many cookie-cutter trilogies in YA fiction these days speaks volumes about a fundamental lack of inventiveness coupled with a rather sleazy desire to rake in money. It makes me wonder why so many writers are so unimaginative and why they're so desperate to sell-out to the demands of the corporate pulp machine, and you know what the answer is? Us! Yep, we, the people who buy this stuff. So we can't really blame the publishers for wanting to milk it, or writers for wanting to get published no matter what they have to pawn to do so. All we can do is blame ourselves for not demanding better quality by voting with out wallets. OTOH, maybe the YA reading public are getting exactly what they deserve!

The sad thing about his novel is that it took only two pages before I started thinking I wasn't going to like this novel. So why did I actually request it from the library? Because I'd read somewhere that it features a strong female character! Or maybe it was supposed to be a tight plot. I don’t remember, frankly, but it turns out that it's neither. I'm starting to realize that when people say that a novel has a strong female character it means - with very few rare and rather treasured exceptions - two things, and two things only:

1. They don't know a strong female character from a strong odor emanating from their ass
2. Truly strong female characters are so rare in YA fiction (even when written by women) that other women are rendered desperate enough to promote any shabby old rag doll to the position if she looks like she might stick for a while.

Cassie is your cookie-cutter standard trope YA fiction teen (seventeen in fact) - you know the one - in a dead-end job just waiting until she's eighteen so she can leave - and do what? Neither she nor we have any idea. She lives with her extended and condescended Italian-American family whom Barnes treats appallingly, saddling them with every bigoted trope imaginable: mobster links, big overly-loving family, restaurant owners, etc, etc. It was painful to read that part, and especially to painful to see Barnes effectively delete this family which she'd so tarted up, from the rest of the novel. They never call Cassie. Cassie never calls them! So much for 'loving' and 'close'. And why make the family Italian-American (or any other group) if you're never going to do something with it?

At about fifty percent in, I was not ready, yet, to write it off, but the emergency exit door was definitely unlocked and tested for ease of egress after I realized that Barnes intended to go for the world's record of how many tired tropes can be fit into a single YA story. How do I trope thee? Let me count the ways:

• Main Female Character (MFC) is homely if not ugly and knows it only too well? Check!
• MFC has a spectacular name shortened to a cheap and nasty name? Check! Cassandra Hobbes goes by Cassie, like some second-hand single, teen, pregnant Stephen King wannabe
• MFC has a quirky side-kick? Check! And Check! Cassie has two (once she joins the FBI)!
• MFC is unusually close to older character? Check! Cassie is close only to her grandmother whom she calls Nonna! Yep. Nonna, because god forbid she call her gran, granny, grandmomma, nanna, or whatever.
• Supposedly strong MFC novel depicts MFC surrounded by women who are portrayed like it’s the 1950's? Check! Nonna is first encountered up to her elbows in flour whilst men sit around watching TV and wise-cracking
• MFC meets a hot guy? Check! Cassie meets Michael (named after an angel! Oh gahd!). Henceforth known as Triangle Guy #1 or TG1
• MFC meets second hot guy? Check! Cassie meets Dean (as in James). Henceforth known as Triangle Guy #2 or TG2. Mission Control, we're go for a love triangle burn on my mark
• Characters in novel have calculatedly super-kewl names? Check! We have FBI agents Tanner Briggs and Lacey Locke. How cool is that? We have Judd Hawkins, ex military (I am not making this name up), and the other female teens are Lia and Sloane. Oh! Mah! Gahd!
• One of hot guys is spoiled, wealthy, self-absorbed? Check! TG1
• The other hot guy is lower-class, brooding, works with hands, chiseled muscles and hair falling into eyes? Check! TG2
• At least one of the guys stalks or at least follows MFC; he's always around. Check! TG1
• At least one of the guys gets into intimate/embarrassing situation with MFC, or sees MFC partially dressed? Check! TG2 sees her in the swimming pool at three am
• At least one of the guys gives her a pet name? Check! TG1 calls her 'Colorado'
• Trope guy is unnaturally and/or irrationally attracted to plain vanilla MFC instantly and for no reason? Check! And Check! TG1 and TG2 are both hot for Cassie for no reason (other than that they're teen guys, I guess).
• At least one of the guys touches her inappropriately and talks to her like she's his property? Check! TG1
• MFC never corrects inappropriate guy? Check! Cassie lets TG1 get away with any amount of inappropriate behavior (including kissing her uninvited) without even mentioning - let alone censuring - it
• MFC is overcome by the wilts and the vapors or is unnaturally and/or irrationally curious about trope dude(s)? Check! Cassie just knows there's something odd about TG1 and gets positively electric over TG2!
• At least one of the trope guys has some dirt on the other? Check! TG1 knows something about TG2, but he's not sharing
• MFC's parents dead or missing? Both! Mom is presumed dead - but my guess is she's simply missing, maybe even faked her own disappearance, and father is estranged, so MFC gets a score of three here on only two parents! How kewl is that?
• MFC is a loner? Check!
• MFC has non-run-of-the-mill issues? Check!
• TG1 has similar type issues? Check!
• TG2 has similar type issues? Check! Let’s face it - all of Barnes's teens have issues. Check times five
• MFC is presented with challenge or opportunity that if she were playing true to her established character, she'd blow off in a millisecond, but which she takes up anyway? Check!
• MFC is somehow special - has powers or traits which make her highly desirable for admission to clandestine organization? Check! She has ability to 'read' people really well - inherited from her...mom! Ooooh!
• MFC is warned away from becoming involved in new opportunity, but ignores warning? Check! TG1 warns her not to join FBI teen team
• MFC hangs out with teen group which has little or no grown-up supervision?? Check!
• Teen group behaves uncomfortably below their chronological age? Check! First night alone (why they waited is a mystery) they play truth or dare! I am not making this up! Not one of the five refuses to play.
• MFC ends up kissing at least one Triangle Guy? Check! Cassie takes a dare which is to kiss TG2 thereby making TG1 jealous
• MFC ends up kissing other Triangle Guy? Check! TG1 kisses her uninvited later

After that truth or dare kiss, Cassie unrealistically assumes that Dean was electrocuted just as she was, so not only has her IQ suffered from the electrical overload in her brain, her age has apparently dropped to thirteen as well. This was her first kiss. She's seventeen and never been kissed. Ahem! Moving right along. So what is it these teens are doing for the FBI? Well, in Barnes World®, some teens are very, very good, naturally good, at profiling or doing other cool FBI work. Cassie is a profiler as is Dean; they can look at a person, and almost magically know intimate details about them. These traits become weaker as the teen ages. This does make some sort of bizarre sense as to why Dean was drafted at age twelve, but it makes no sense as to why Cassie, on the verge of exiting her teens, was left so late for the draft. Barnes offers no explanation or rationale as to why teens would be good at this and then lose their ability as they age.

Lia is a lie detector - she can automatically tell if someone is lying and can lie herself without anyone knowing. No explanation is given for how she is as perfect at this as every other teen in the group is at what they do. Sloane is a walking database, randomly spewing out facts (so we’re led to believe) and statistics. Dean, as I mentioned, is a profiler like Cassie (which begs the never asked question of why they needed Cassie on the team at all). Michael is good at reading emotions. The truly odd thing is that their trait is all any of these teens have to offer us. Not a one of them has any personality at all. No one really talks about the work they're doing or anything other than Lia and Cassie endlessly rambling on about the boys. Lia evidently has the hots fro Michael too. Sloane seems to be asexual, but we'll probably learn alter that she has the hots fro Lia. All of these teens seem to be white, although there is some pressure for Lia to be Asian. Apparently no Hispanics or African Americans, or any other groups have these talents.

But let’s not be unrealistic here! Hell no! The teens are not allowed on active cases (we'll see how long that lasts - it didn't!). We're given no explanation as to why this is so - unless you count super-mysterious and vague allusions to some teen tragedy some time before. And guess what? The teens do absolutely no school-work! Maybe this is why Dean is almost autistic in his social interactions. No school work since the age of twelve maketh dean a dull boy? Instead, the group is tasked with going over cold cases to see if they can come up with a breakthrough which the FBI trained experts failed to make!

How this is supposed to work with at least four of the five of them is a mystery. Dean's and Cassie's talent is reading people - not reading old files. Michael's talent is reading people's emotions, not cold case files' emotions. Lia's talent is detecting people lying, not cold case files lying, although she does claim to be able to detect if someone is lying in a recording! Yes, she's that good! It seems these teens are useless without a person to read, and since there is no person there to read what’s their value? I'm confident this won't stop them from achieving major break-throughs, though!

How all of this this is supposed to work given that we’re told that Cassie is supposed to be in training - yet receives none - is problematical. Cassie's "training" consists of trips to the mall with Lacey Locke, where they sit in the food court and she 'profiles' random people, but there is no attempt whatsoever to verify if she gets it right. It’s just assumed that she's right! So what’s the point? Where’s the training? There is none.

Barnes employs the term 'UNSUB' (yes in block caps!) for 'unknown subject' and that just makes my skin crawl when they all keep tossing it around. I have no idea if this is a term which real police or FBI employ, but it’s just plain ugly. I would have chosen a different word or made one up; something along the lines of 'perp' or 'suspect' (which I would have reduced to 'suss' amongst the teens for a kewl factor). And what the hell is with the block caps? This is not an acronym!

So when Cassie goes down to the village, inappropriately taking a cold-case file with her to read, TG1 shows up again. He's quite clearly stalking Cassie, yet she raises not even a hint of a suspicion or an objection to it. But TG2 has TG1 beat. When Cassie realizes that TG2's father is a serial killer, she rushes back to the house and TG2 is magically waiting for her on the stairs! Sorry, not believable. Not even remotely. Not even a little bit. How did a totally amateur story like this ever get past an editor? Or are standards really this disastrously low?

Time to wind this up. The villain was easily identifiable by page 266, and was one of three people I'd suspected from quite an early stage. If I can figure it out (near enough) you know it's not very well disguised. If you're willing to lower your standards sufficiently, you might find this not too big a waste of your time, but I have no intention of pursuing this series any further. This is warty.