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It took a bit longer to get here than I originally thought it would have. After finishing (paid link) Bad Blood and doing the review, I got sidetracked as I tried to read Twelve. However, I finally finished it the other day and now I can happily review Twelve by Jennifer Lynn Barnes ahead of the new book, (paid link) Dangerous Impulses.
Synopsis:
“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.”
eBook (paid link)
Thoughts
I was surprised to find this book at the end of my copy of Bad Blood. It is the only printed form of the book available, which I thought was really cool. Anyway, Twelve jumps us forward a few years. Some of the group are in the FBI training program and some, like Cassie, are working on bringing new Naturals into the program.
What starts off as a normal day turns into a bit of a blast from the past when Mackenzie McBride, one of the first cold cases the team solved, is threatening to jump if no one will listen to her. The story goes into its normal routine that we’ve seen in the other books, where the team must collaborate to solve a mystery that only Mackenzie believes was a murder. We see the return of most of our favorite characters in a new, smaller, Naturals story.
While I found the overall story to be right in line with the others, I feel it loses depth by being a novella and not a full blown novel. The ending came too quickly with not as much of a mystery that came with the others. It was more of a singular story line than our usual multiple story lines that came together. It’s worth a read and the price but I won’t lie and say it kept my interest in nearly the same way.
Score
While I still believe Twelve is a valid read and worth the time, I also know it isn’t one of the (paid link) Natural books I want to read again. It’s a small bite mystery that can’t compare to a full length novel but it’s at least entertaining while it lasts. You can find my other reviews for the other books below:
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