45 pages 1 hour read

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Naturals

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Character Analysis

Cassie Hobbes

Cassie is a 17-year-old girl who lives with her estranged father’s mother and their family. Five years ago, her mother, Lorelai Hobbes, disappeared and left behind a bloody crime scene. Cassie found the scene, and it still haunts her today. Her mother’s body was never found, but she is presumed dead. Cassie still has trouble adjusting to living with her extended family after growing up with only her single mother for 12 years. Her mother was a con artist who used her natural talent for studying people to pretend to be psychic. Cassie adopted these skills and developed her own talent for reading people, working with her mother by scoping out the crowds before psychic “readings.”

When FBI Special Agent Tanner Briggs recruits Cassie for the Naturals program, she joins because she wants to help solve crimes, since her mother’s crime was never solved. Due to her mother’s murder and her expert profiling skills, Cassie has never felt like a normal teenager. She acknowledges that her insight into people’s BPE—behavior, personality, and environment—is not something she can “turn off” or ignore, which has made truly connecting with others more challenging. She constantly wonders if she is even capable of real love and friendship.