Book Review: Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Dark Inside
Dark Inside #1
Author: Jeyn Roberts
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian
Released: November 1st 2011
Review Source: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Available: Amazon

Summary: (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 everyday 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 by standing 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.

Dark Inside is an apocalyptic novel, where four teens try to survive in a world gone mad. An evilness has crept into the minds of many, causing horrible acts of violence. While fighting through constant madness, the teens struggle to find hope and light in a terrible darkness. To simply put it, this book was amazing. To the intriguing characters, shocking action scenes, and the mental horror, I found nothing wrong with this book. Jeyn Roberts did a fantastic job of conveying her traumatizing story to the reader. Throughout the novel she switches between four main characters following their individual roles in the story.

At first I was a bit cautious, but as I read on, the book continued to flow with great ease. Each character was compelling and grew throughout the entire novel. Compelling, in that the choices that the characters made were extremely realistic, and truly provided evidence of why they reacted to the conflict in the ways that they did. The author pushed each one to their emotional and mental limit, showing what could happen to real people in these circumstances. To those of you who don’t know this author or book, then you better get acquainted fast, because I predict some amazing things are still yet to come from Jeyn Roberts, with book 2, Rage Within.