Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Since the beginning of mankind, civilizations have fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs...and now us. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening: An ancient evil has been unleashed, and it's turning everyday people into hunters, killers, and crazies. This is the world Mason, Aries, Clementine, and Michael are living in--or rather, trying to survive. Each is fleeing unspeakable horror, from murderous chaos to brutal natural disasters, and each is traveling the same road in a world gone mad. Amid the throes of the apocalypse and clinging to love and meaning wherever it can be found, these four teens are on a journey into the heart of darkness--and to find each other and a place of safety 

Jami's Review:  

 

Dark Inside was a refreshing post-apocalyptic style story that held my attention from the first page. Each main character (Michael, Mason, Clementine, and Aries) had their own opening chapter. They each had their own tragedy/traumatic event that you learned about and saw through their eyes before they were forced to escape.. or die. Amazingly, each character has their own voice. The two boys have totally different personalities, motives, memories, ect that keep them separate from each other. Same goes for the girls. Only once toward the end of the novel could I not remember which event was Michael and which was Mason, and that’s pretty darn impressive.

As far as plot goes, there is plenty of action at the beginning of this book to propel you into the chapters where things start to slow down. No book can be all action, all the time, and I think Ms. Roberts did an excellent job pacing this so that there wasn’t a lot of dead time between action (no pun intended). She did a great job at keeping the flow between chapters, even while changing perspectives. And toward the end, where the four main characters started meeting up and enteracting with side characters, it was so easy to keep everyone separated. I do think a few members of Aries’ group could have been left out as they weren’t major characters, but maybe they will be more important as the series goes on.

As for feels, this book has plenty! Laughing, crying, screaming. There is a bit of everything going on inside your mind as you read through this novel. I felt so, so bad for one of the male characters on so many occasions. I wanted to cry for him and just hold him. And then a side character who seems super important but is also very elusive really caught my attention. I’m so intrigued to see what it is about these characters that makes them different from the people who have already died and the people who are doing all the killing. Is it a genetic thing? A thought process? I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of Rage Within soon to find out! In fact, I plan on buying it this weekend just so Dark Inside is still fresh in my mind when I read it.

This is definitely a 5 out of 5 stars book. If you like dystopian setting, engaging characters, complicated stories and lots of emotion, this is definitely a great pick for you. If you don’t like those things, then I don’t know what you look for in a book. Happy reading!

Bryson's Review:

Let me start off by saying that this is the first review I’ve written where I didn’t connect with the book as much as I had wanted to. It kills me to write this, because I want to love every book, but I know that I never will. This is, in NO WAY, me telling you to not read this book. This is simply how I felt.
           Dark Inside is a 329 page novel set in a time where an ancient evil emerges into the world, changing people and the world as we know it.
           I didn’t quite connect with the characters. I was really enjoying the book in the beginning; it wasn’t until I had met all the characters and then was going back to them in other chapters that I disconnected. I felt like they didn’t feel enough for some of the situations they were in. There was a lack of tenderness for some events that I felt should have been given.
          After I’d read the first chapters that introduced each individual character, I started to lose touch with them. I had forgotten what had happened to the character in the previous chapter, and it ended up being one big blur to me.
          I personally love the idea for the book, and I am not saying that Jeyn did a bad job. She didn’t. This just wasn’t the book for me, and I hate to say that. Don’t let my review discourage you. Just because this book wasn’t the book for me, doesn’t mean it can’t be the book for you