Review: Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Book Description via Goodreads:

ARC, 362 pages

September 2, 2011, Pan Macmillan UK

Four teenagers on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found. THE DARK INSIDE is a stunning, cinematic thriller: 28 DAYS LATER meets THE ROAD.

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 worse is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, hooking on to weakness, turning the unwary into hunters, killers, crazies.

Mason: His 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. Everyone he knows is killed.

Aries: A school bus, an aftershock and a crash. Pulled out of the wreckage by a mysterious stranger, she’s about to discover a world changed forever.

Clementine: An emergency meeting at the town hall that descends into murderous chaos. Outside the rest of their community encircle with weapons. How can those you trust turn into savage strangers?

Michael: A brutal road rage incident. When the police arrive on the scene they gun down the guilty and turn on the by-standing crowd. Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad?

Source: Hattie from Pan Macmillan (Thank you!)

My Thoughts:

Dark Inside was one of the strongest, creepiest books I’ve ever read. It had a strange charm. Even though I was freaking out, even though I was scared, I still wanted to read it. It was unputdownable.

After an earth-shattering earthquake, lots of places went up in flames, fell down and crumbled to the ground. Some people got injured, some people died. The others who survived the quake have been divided into two: the normal ones and the monsters. When I say ‘monsters,’ I don’t really mean zombies. I mean people who have become evil to the point that they combed the face of the earth making sure that no normal person lived. They were dedicated to blood, death and destruction. What was scary about that was that they were people – living, breathing humans with different brains.

There were a lot of characters in this novel: Mason, Michael, Clementine, Aries and Nothing. Dark Inside followed the stories of these five teens as they struggled in the new world and tried to survive one day at a time. Mason was mourning for his mom’s death. Michael was alone in his apartment. Clementine got away from a town meeting massacre. Aries survived a bus accident. Nothing was the most mysterious of them all. They all have lost their loved ones, witnessed the wildness and the violence of the monsters as the number of the normal humans depleted. Their individual struggles and experiences were fascinating. Throughout the novel, relationships between the survivors were weakened and strengthened. Some survivors preferred to live alone but others banded together, seeing strength in numbers.

There was an air of mystery that came with the ‘change.’ Up to this moment, I still haven’t fully grasped what had happened. Right up to the end of the novel, I still had unanswered questions but that didn’t stop me from loving Dark Inside. Roberts spun a good story connecting all the decline of several empires and civilizations in the past to her version of ‘the apocalypse.’ I have to say, I was impressed with it. Dark Inside was also a reflection of the human psyche and human soul, revealing the darkest parts of ourselves.

Dark Inside delivers heart-pounding suspense, action and creepiness with a touch of romance. Violent and bloody, this is reserved to strong readers. I highly recommend this to dystopian fans.

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