Books like The Naturals

Pip Fitz-Amobi picks a closed murder case as her senior project and systematically dismantles the accepted narrative. Holly Jackson structures the story through interview transcripts, research logs, and Pip's own analysis, which gives it a procedural feel that fans of The Naturals will love. Pip has that same driven quality as Cassie.

She cannot leave a puzzle unsolved, even when the answers start putting her in danger. The mystery is genuinely well constructed with real misdirection and a satisfying payoff. I recommend this to everyone who loved The Naturals because it scratches the same itch.

A smart teen protagonist who takes investigation seriously, real stakes, and a community full of people with something to hide.

Five students walk into detention. Only four walk out alive. Each survivor has a motive for wanting the fifth student dead.

Karen McManus gives you four distinct narrators, each hiding something significant, and lets you try to figure out who is lying before the reveal. The ensemble cast dynamic mirrors The Naturals perfectly. You have a group of teenagers, each with their own personality and perspective, thrown together by circumstance and forced to navigate trust and suspicion simultaneously.

The plotting is tight, the red herrings are well placed, and the character work makes you care about the outcome beyond just solving the puzzle. It is also a quick, addictive read. The kind of book you start on a Saturday morning and finish before dinner.

Stevie Bell is obsessed with true crime and gets into Ellingham Academy, an elite Vermont boarding school with a famous unsolved kidnapping from the 1930s. Maureen Johnson alternates between Stevie's present-day investigation and the historical crime, building two mysteries simultaneously. The boarding school setting creates the same kind of contained, high-pressure environment as the Naturals house.

Stevie is surrounded by brilliant, eccentric students who all might be connected to the old case. Johnson writes detective thinking well. You see Stevie work through evidence, form theories, hit dead ends, and adjust.

It feels like watching a real investigation unfold rather than a character magically arriving at the right answer. The series builds across three books with excellent payoff.

Jazz is the son of the most prolific serial killer in American history. His father taught him how to read people, how to manipulate, how to think like a predator. Now Jazz uses those skills to help police catch a new killer.

The psychological edge here is darker than The Naturals, but the core concept is similar. A teenager who understands criminal minds in ways that disturb the adults around him. Jazz constantly wrestles with whether his abilities make him a hero or prove he is just like his father.

Barry Lyga does not shy away from the implications of having these skills. The investigation scenes are strong, and the tension between Jazz's desire to be good and his awareness of his own capacity for violence adds a layer that keeps the story compelling beyond the whodunit.

Barnes wrote this after The Naturals, and you can feel the evolution in her craft. Avery Grambs, a nobody from nothing, inherits a billionaire's fortune and must survive in a mansion full of puzzles, rivalries, and four grandsons who each want the inheritance for themselves. While the setting shifts from FBI to old money, the core appeal is identical.

A sharp female protagonist dropped into a high-stakes environment where everyone around her has secrets and she must use her intelligence to survive. The puzzle elements are excellent. Barnes constructs layered riddles that reward careful reading.

And the Hawthorne brothers are the kind of complex, competitive characters that recall the Naturals team. If you loved how Barnes balances mystery, romance, and ensemble dynamics, this is her doing it again at an even higher level.

Six friends on a road trip. An RV that will not start. A sniper in the dark who knows one of them is hiding something. Holly Jackson strips away everything except tension and secrets, creating a locked-room thriller that takes place over a single night.

The pacing here is relentless. Jackson keeps tightening the screws as each character's secrets surface under pressure. Like The Naturals, the strength is in the group dynamics. These friends think they know each other, but fear and survival instinct reveal how much they have been hiding.

The contained setting forces constant interaction and confrontation. It is a faster, more intense read than The Naturals, but fans of Barnes will appreciate how Jackson uses the same building blocks. Smart teens, escalating danger, and the question of who you can trust when everything falls apart.

November is shipped off to a secretive boarding school where students are descended from the world's greatest spies, strategists, and assassins. When students start dying, she has to figure out the rules of a world she never knew existed. The spy academy setting gives Killing November a different flavor from The Naturals, but the core is the same.

A girl dropped into an environment where everyone around her has been trained for something dangerous, and she has to catch up fast. Mather creates a paranoid atmosphere where alliances shift constantly and no one says exactly what they mean. The mystery builds well across the book, and the school itself is a great setting.

Fans of The Naturals who want something with a more international espionage angle will find a lot to like here. The sequel, Hunting November, raises the stakes even further.