Synopsis: 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. -Goodreads

Review: I don’t give 5 star reviews often, so it should be pretty obvious that I loved this book.Love, love, loved it! I started reading it late last night on PulseIt! and finished before lunch time today. There have been so many great dystopian/post apocalyptic books out lately, that I definitely incredible it can be to read a book where you actually see the chaos of the world ending, rather than just the aftermath. Right from the get go, this book is sad and disturbing but it can’t help but ring true and drag you along for the ride.

The book switches viewpoints fairly often, but is still easy to follow (although, both guys having M names gets a little confusing later on and I had to keep stopping to confirm which was which). All four of the main characters had distinct personalities and interesting viewpoints at the end of the world as we know it. It will be interesting to see all of their stories become cohesive as the series progresses. (Before I even reached the end of the book I had to stop and make sure this was a series as I definitely want Jeyn Roberts to keep writing these for awhile).

The reason for all the apocalyptic epicness is only hinted at in this debut, but it works. Actually, I’m really curious to see how the entire series plays out and am curious how many books are planned, just so I can get a sense of the pacing since things didn’t really start to come together until the end.

It is really hard to write a decent sized blog post when you don’t really have anything to criticize because you don’t want to give anything away since everyone reading this post should definitely be going out of their way to read this book. Hop to it! Great story, great writing, great characters… it’s all there, so go read Dark Inside.

Buy the book @Amazon (US) @Amazon (CAN)

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Second Opinions:
@Daisy Chain Book Reviews
@Wondrous Reads
@Books4Teens