Title: Inside Out
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Series: Insiders #1
Publisher: Mira Ink
Publication date: January 2011
Format: Paperback | 315 pages
Genre: YA | Dystopian
I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody.
One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I just to my job and try to avoid the Population Control Police, who dream of recycling scrubs into fertiliser. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? It's not like it's dangerous…
Well, turns out it is. Because I know ever corridor, pipe and shortcut I've become the go-to girl to lead a revolution. I know if we find a gateway to Outside it'll be suicide plain and simple. But guess who likes a challenge?
My thoughts:
Inside Out follows the story of Trella, one scrub among thousands whose job it is to clean out the pipes that make up the 'Inside'. While some scrubs take pride in their work, Trella can't help but feel like she doesn't belong when she sneaks around the pipes and catches glimpses of the Uppers. Because of Trella's knowledge of all the shortcuts and ways around the pipes, she soon becomes the figurehead needed to lead a revolution and change the scrubs lives for the better.
Trella was a great character. She had such a fiery personality and I really enjoyed reading her interactions with the other scrubs. Trella did kind of push people away in order to protect herself and while it was annoying at times, it was also endearing once I realised why exactly she does it.
However, a lot of the characters, in my opinion, were lacking a lot of depth. I didn't find Cog and Riley to be relatable at all - they always came into the story where they were needed and never provided any additional support to the plot. I didn't connect to them at all and I feel that it was purely because they weren't around enough, especially Cog. Cog appeared frequently in the beginning of the book but afterwards he wasn't heard from at all. Both Riley and Cog were characters I didn't end up caring about so in the end, I wan't anxious about what might happen to them.
I have to admit as well, I lost interest in the plot very quickly. There was no issue with finding it predictable or unoriginal just because I couldn't bring myself to care enough to think about it. I think there wasn't enough suspense for me. I recognised where the author really tried, for example, countdowns to somebody's execution. But if I don't like the character in the first place, it's not going to affect me greatly if he was executed so it didn't really work.
Overall I wouldn't really recommend this read. There have been a lot of good reviews for it though, and this is only my opinion, so check it out if it looks interesting.
My rating: 4/10
Maria V. Snyder:
Insiders:
- Inside Out
- Outside In
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