A review by izzywayout
Bad Blood by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

4.0

"Life is full of drowning people," I said, continuing to parrot her own words back at her, "ready and willing to drown you, too—unless you drown them first."

[a: Jennifer Lynn Barnes|164187|Jennifer Lynn Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243935916p2/164187.jpg] is a master at writing the most addictive YA series you'll ever get your hands on. In 2015 I read the first three books in this series back-to-back in a week, and they were some of my favorite reads of the year. I probably should've picked them up for a reread before diving right into [b: Bad Blood|179684|Bad Blood|Lorna Sage|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348789416s/179684.jpg|2064424], but this was still a really great story.

The very best thing about her books are her characters. My favorite thing in books is always to read about characters, more than crazy plots or action scenes or anything else (although this book and this series in general has plenty of those as well), and that's what wins me over. She always manages to write about a group of friends that feel so realistic and have such different personalities and I fell in love with each and every one of them. The other Naturals were less featured in this one, because the story was ultimately about closing Cassie's cycle.

However, I felt like some of the twists in this were a little too unrealistic. Not that I don't like the idea of a murdering cult—I actually love it. But some of the answers we got in this one were too far-fetched for me to buy into them, although they did wrap everything up in a nice way. And I do suspend my disbelief before picking up this book, because yeah, something about the idea of five teenagers solving cases for the FBI doesn't ring too truthful to me, but whatever, I have fun reading these!!

I'm definitely going to miss these characters and this story, and I want to reread this series in the near future. If you're in need of a quick, unputdownable read (that is guaranteed to take you out of a slump), you should definitely give this series a go.