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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Very good read. I'm very interested in finding out the rest of the story in the second book.
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Interesting story with many viewpoints from different characters. It seems that it is the end of the world and something is happening to some of the population. Young adults navigate losing family and creating their own on a journey to safety.
Why oh why did I wait so long to read this one? Simon & Schuster were nice enough to send me a review copy back some time and I never got around to it until now and I'm kicking myself wondering why I didn't read it sooner!
There are a few keys words that stuck out to me on the back cover of the ARC - "Society has fallen apart. No one can be trusted." Sounds great, huh? But those words are nothing compared to what actually transpires in the novel. Dark Inside is a creepy book, even scary at times. I'd even go as far as saying that Jeyn Roberts has a twisted mind! The detail she puts into her writing (the death's of the people, the killing scenes, etc) is absolutely wild (and twisted and crazy and it will have your stomach in knots and your nose wrinkled). Yes, the detail is that vivid. But more than that, the story has a great plot. An earthquake that rattles and shakes more than just the ground. People are turning on one another, killing each other and few that are left to survive are being hunted down. You'll be on the edge of your seat the whole time it takes you to read Dark Inside, and trust me it wont take that long because you'll be so engrossed and have that need to find out what happens next.
The novel goes between narrators and Jeyn makes it easy to follow. We're taken on adventures of basically the survival of the fittest and each character has their own way of dealing with the almost apocalypse type thing that some say is happening. Each character has the common goal of surviving and outrunning what is out there but yet each character couldn't be more different. We get so many emotions running through the characters and pages of Dark Inside but it never feels overwhelming. The cowardice, the bravery, the sadness, the adrenaline, everything the characters (and the reader) feel ties in so well and makes for a great book. And the ending!? Wow!
Jeyn Roberts debut novel is awesome, truly truly awesome, and definitely worth the read! Just be prepared, at times Dark Inside is gruesome and paints a clear, sometimes unwanted picture in your head that may keep you up at night!
Enjoy!
There are a few keys words that stuck out to me on the back cover of the ARC - "Society has fallen apart. No one can be trusted." Sounds great, huh? But those words are nothing compared to what actually transpires in the novel. Dark Inside is a creepy book, even scary at times. I'd even go as far as saying that Jeyn Roberts has a twisted mind! The detail she puts into her writing (the death's of the people, the killing scenes, etc) is absolutely wild (and twisted and crazy and it will have your stomach in knots and your nose wrinkled). Yes, the detail is that vivid. But more than that, the story has a great plot. An earthquake that rattles and shakes more than just the ground. People are turning on one another, killing each other and few that are left to survive are being hunted down. You'll be on the edge of your seat the whole time it takes you to read Dark Inside, and trust me it wont take that long because you'll be so engrossed and have that need to find out what happens next.
The novel goes between narrators and Jeyn makes it easy to follow. We're taken on adventures of basically the survival of the fittest and each character has their own way of dealing with the almost apocalypse type thing that some say is happening. Each character has the common goal of surviving and outrunning what is out there but yet each character couldn't be more different. We get so many emotions running through the characters and pages of Dark Inside but it never feels overwhelming. The cowardice, the bravery, the sadness, the adrenaline, everything the characters (and the reader) feel ties in so well and makes for a great book. And the ending!? Wow!
Jeyn Roberts debut novel is awesome, truly truly awesome, and definitely worth the read! Just be prepared, at times Dark Inside is gruesome and paints a clear, sometimes unwanted picture in your head that may keep you up at night!
Enjoy!
Want to rate 3.5 but kindle won't let me
I read this in just a few short hours. It was a nice diversion, a quick read. Could make a good movie plot.
I read this in just a few short hours. It was a nice diversion, a quick read. Could make a good movie plot.
I'm a big fan of a dystopian novel, and I like the concept of this, but I think it might be a bit over complicated? Different spectrums of fury being the main thing, but I'm not exactly an expert in zombification.
I can't really place my finger on what about this book stops me loving it, but I did enjoy it.
I can't really place my finger on what about this book stops me loving it, but I did enjoy it.
I enjoyed most parts of this book. A page turner at times, this book portrays a post-apocalyptic scenario, where humans turned on one another. Sometimes I would lose the plot and have to take a step back and reread a page or 2, but overall the characters were well developed. Roberts is able to tie up the end fairly nicely, but I’m not too sure if I’ll continue reading the series.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
A very exciting read! Coming from someone who doesn't normally read this genre or age group, I really got into it. The surprising bits of graphic detail had my heart racing but it never crossed the line of TOO much. Would definitely recommend.
Dark Inside is one of those books that is completely different to anything I have read before. I was hooked on the book from page one. However, being in a weird reading slump it took me a while to read but when I got about halfway through I couldn't put it down and snapped out my slump. I devoured the second half in one sitting. It was intense, dark and thrilling, everything I like! Although I have to attempt the four POVs changes took a lot of get my head around.
Full Review: http://totallybookalicious.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/book-review-dark-inside-dark-inside-1.html
Full Review: http://totallybookalicious.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/book-review-dark-inside-dark-inside-1.html
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
For me, what rescued [b:Dark Inside|10841167|Dark Inside (Dark Inside, #1)|Jeyn Roberts|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327182798s/10841167.jpg|13996404] from getting an extremely negative review was the fast-paced action and adventure, weird creepiness and what Tatiana likes to call "compulsive readability". The book had many faults, which I will go into, and it was on the whole not a great work of dystopian fiction.
Basically, there's this earthquake one day and suddenly people everywhere start acting weird... becoming possessed by a violent rage, turning on their families and friends, searching the streets for new victims to torture and kill... and amongst all this are a few individuals (inc. Mason, Aries, Michael and Clementine) who remain unaffected by this, er, infection or whatever it is. At the beginning, our four protagonists have never met one another, but as fate will have it they eventually come together and their stories begin to entwine.
Every so often the book would stop in it's fast-paced tracks and another mysterious perspective would be heard that is simply called 'Nothing' and reminded me a great deal of the voice of the darkness in the [b:Gone|2536134|Gone (Gone, #1)|Michael Grant|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266904868s/2536134.jpg|2543657] series by [a:Michael Grant|1599723|Michael Grant|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1216331499p2/1599723.jpg]. It is, much to my annoyance, still unclear at the book's close what this 'Nothing' is.
You know, it's all okay. But it has that sense of "oh my god, quick, run from the monsters!" and then they get away and they're all nice and safe and they walk around a corner and "oh my god, more monsters, RUN!!!" And again, as in [b:Divergent|8306857|Divergent (Divergent, #1)|Veronica Roth|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327873996s/8306857.jpg|13155899], the dystopia is mediocre. I used the following description to try and sum up what I expect a good dystopian novel to be:
Basically, it's where the author imagines a hypothetical world that's usually set in the future and takes a relevent political or social issue or issues and creates a fictional society that could possibly be what might happen if humanity was to follow a certain idea or movement or perhaps even carry on behaving the way they are. For example, failing to improve the world's environmental problems.
So far, that's not what's happening. I will be reading the sequel that I'm sure is coming so perhaps I will be wowed there and realise I was wrong to doubt [a:Jeyn Roberts|4292165|Jeyn Roberts|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1292273727p2/4292165.jpg] ability to create a successful dystopia. So far it all doesn't make sense as to why these people's minds have been hijacked... they're not zombies, if the author had gone down that route she could have used the whole 'cure for cancer gone wrong' thing that's popular today. But an earthquake that makes people get super angry? I'm not seeing the political/social relevance. So here's the five main things that turned me off in this book:
1) 4 POVs
This does not work. I have never known it to work and I have never enjoyed a book with more than two (main) perspectives. In fact, to be honest, I'm not a big fan of multiple perspectives at all. Furthermore, these characters did not have distinct enough voices to allow four different POVs to work, I could only tell them apart by the stuff that happened to them, like "so this is the one who's mum died" and "this is the one who's trying to find her brother", but personality-wise I was clueless.
2) Throwaway Characters
In a way that is exactly opposite to authors like [a:Melina Marchetta|47104|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1277655889p2/47104.jpg], the author brings many characters into the story who are all unimportant and quickly disregarded. What's the point? There was a bit where Michael teamed up with a group of people he'd met and he spoke effectionately of two of these characters who he referred to as 'the mother' and 'the child'. There's a scene that should have been dramatic and emotional except it wasn't because I couldn't relate to Michael's feelings towards people who I knew only as 'the mother' and 'the child'. There were so many one-dimensional characters in this book.
3) Quickly Pulled Together End
I thought the ending seemed rushed and lacked smoothness for it. All the four protagonists spent the novel doing their own individual things and telling their own stories and then, like lightning, they all just happen to, well, run into one another. It felt to me like the author had not given much thought to their meeting and wanted simply to get it over with, it was weird the way it happened so fast and read a little ridiculously. As with the turning a corner and "oh my god monsters!" thing I mentioned above, it was like: Aries would be running and she'd knock into a guy who says "hi, I'm Mason...blah-de-blah" and then they'd both turn a corner and there'd be another boy and girl who'd say "oh, we're Michael and Clementine" - see what I mean?
4) We've Still No Idea What's Going On
I appreciate that this is probably the start of at least a trilogy, if not an even longer series, and that it would be a stupid idea to tell the readers everything in the first book. But I felt that there was so little given away in this novel that I came away at the end with nothing. We travel through the books with these characters, we witness earthquakes, murders, heartache... and in the end we remain entirely clueless as to what it's all about. You could have given us something!
5) Casual Misogyny
I had to mention this because I thought that it was the most in-my-face annoying fact about the novel. I was sick of hearing the female protagonists apologise by saying "sorry, I'm such a girl". All the time. One of them gets a bit teary and they're apologising for being a girl. And this novel was written by a woman! Come on ladies, KICK ASS! And if you want to cry, don't effin' apologise for it!
Anyway, it could have been a lot better, that's for sure. But there is still potential here and I will wait and see what the sequel brings.
Many thanks to Macmillan Children's Books for kindly providing a copy of this for review.