Book Review: Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Title: Dark Inside 

Author: Jeyn Roberts
Series: N/A
Pages: 360
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
Date of Publication: 2nd September 2011
Source: Publisher
Synopsis from Goodreads: Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…Now it’s our turn. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, turning everday people into hunters, killers, crazies.

Mason's mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground, and everyone he knows is killed. Aries survives an earthquake aftershock on a bus, and thinks the worst is over when a mysterious stranger pulls her out of the wreckage, but she’s about to discover a world changed forever. Clementine, the only survivor of an emergency town hall meeting that descends into murderous chaos, is on the run from savage strangers who used to be her friends and neighbors. And Michael witnesses a brutal road rage incident that is made much worse by the arrival of the police--who gun down the guilty party and then turn on the bystanding crowd.

Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad? These four teens are on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found, this is a journey into the heart of darkness – but also a journey to find each other and a place of safety.

My Thoughts:
I’d never heard of this book before I received it from Macmillan, but it sounded good, so I thought I’d read it. I went in not knowing what to think or expect, and now, having finished it, I’m still not sure how to think of it.

There are earthquakes, huge earthquakes, that shudder across the world, and they let something out. Nobody knows what it is, they only know that it is making half of the world’s population into crazy, merciless killing machines. Four kids have survived, and they need to figure out a way to keep surviving the killing game that has taken over the world.

First off, I will say, that this book scared me. It was creepy, it freaked me out, and on more than one occasion I nearly put it down because I was so scared. I get scared easily, but still, it all seemed very real to me. Maybe there won’t be huge earthquakes that unleash a ‘disease’ across the world, but I couldn’t help imagining that this could actually happen. I know that it’s unlikely and that it most probably won’t, but I couldn’t help it. I was tired, and I was reading with my little book light in bed in the dark at night, and my imagination ran away with me a little… Or a lot ;)

The book is told in four parts. Each chapter alternates between the four main characters: Mason, Aries, Clementine and Michael. They’re all from different parts of America, but they all witness the same horror going on around them in completely different ways. For Mason, his school was blown up but he wasn’t in it at the time, for Aries, she was on the bus on the way to play practise when the earthquakes struck. Clementine was at a town meeting when two of her friends from childhood shot down everyone alive in the building after she managed to escape, and Michael witnessed a murder AND an execution in the space of around ten minutes. And that’s all in the first 50 pages. The rest of the book is them fighting the crazy killing people, and trying to survive and figure out what is going on, with all internet and communications destroyed in the earthquakes.

I admired each and every one of the four main characters. I admired their strength, and their determination to keep going, even when it looked like there was no way out of the horror. I’m not saying they didn’t have bad times, but despite these, they kept going. They were SO brave and SO courageous, and so inspiring. Even though it’s fiction, it just shows that when things are hard, you have to keep going, no matter how much it hurts.

As I said before, I don’t know what to make of this book. On the one hand, it was AMAZINGLY written. I could see everything playing out like a movie in my head – could see all the almost ghostlike towns, all the crummy little hidey holes that the four kids used to survive. The writing was brilliant, and it’s hard to believe that this is Jeyn Roberts first book, because it was just SO good. She has some serious talent. But, on the other hand, it terrified me. I know I’ve already said it, but it did. And for someone who gets scared easily this might not mean much, I know, but still. ;)

Overall though, I think I really did enjoy it. I’d recommend it to fans of YA fiction, who are looking for something new and different to read. I’ve certainly never read anything like it before. I’ll definitely be reading more post-apocalyptic fiction in the future, but I think I might need to read some light and fluffy novels before I do. ;)

*Thank you to Macmillan for sending me this in exchange for an honest review. In no way has this affected my opinion of the book! :) 

Challenges:
2011 Debut Author Challenge #23
2011 100+ Reading Challenge #72