I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thou­sands who work the lower lev­els, keep­ing Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occa­sion­ally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper lev­els? The only neck at risk is my own…until I acci­den­tally start a rebel­lion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution…

The premise for Inside Out, a soci­ety liv­ing within, essen­tially, a metal prison, with an oppres­sive class hier­ar­chy, is the kind of dystopian tale I love. The world build­ing was well thought out and realistic. While sep­a­ra­tion of the classes is noth­ing new, what makes Inside Out so intrigu­ing is that, not only are we read­ing for all intents and pur­poses, a sit­u­a­tion that, his­tor­i­cally, has taken place again and again, but is set in a fan­tas­ti­cal, strange envi­ron­ment.

Snyder’s nar­ra­tive is very evoca­tive and feels oppres­sive and read­ing Inside Out I was immersed in Trella’s world of warm, claus­tro­pho­bic, end­less metal, dark tun­nels, and stale, recy­cled air. I found myself yearn­ing for wide open spaces, the sky, nature, to breath in crisp, fresh air. The pac­ing of Inside Out is spot on — as the reader, along­side Trella slowly unrav­els some of the secrets of Inside. Like all the best sto­ries, not all mys­ter­ies are solved, and what started out as a seem­ingly sim­ple premise sud­denly becomes a lot more com­plex by the end of the novel.

Trella is a true strong hero­ine. She is skilled, inde­pen­dent, stub­born, but flawed. I was instantly drawn to her, despite her less than nice char­ac­ter at times. Her char­ac­ter growth was very real­is­tic and sat­is­fac­tory. We see her develop from a loner, look­ing down on those around her, unin­ter­ested in her fel­low Scrubs who she thinks of as sheep, and only look­ing out for her­self, to gain­ing their respect and vice-versa, form­ing friend­ships and alliances, and finally, fight­ing for them.

But what I loved most about Inside Out was that we have a hero­ine who (inad­ver­tently) starts and con­tin­ues a rebel­lion, not for some boy she just met, but for her­self, and for the Scrubs she lives with every day, even for the Uppers. It’s not just Trella who is the hero­ine. An entire band of peo­ple from both the Lower and the Upper lev­els join together to bring about a change and it results in some touch­ing moments, as even those who don’t know exactly what’s going on but risk their lives to help and cover for Trella any­way. It’s a very pow­er­ful message.

There is a hint of romance in this book, but it is very low-key and not the main story-line at all, which I found refresh­ing. It also meant the poten­tial rela­tion­ship was slowly devel­oped and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing more of it in the next book.

I will admit that I found the descrip­tion of the var­i­ous lev­els slightly con­fus­ing! If I had any issues with Inside Out it would sim­ply be that I could have done with a few less descrip­tions of Trella crawl­ing around the pip­ing — but under­stood that they were nec­es­sary for pro­gres­sion of the plot and it cer­tainly didn’t spoil my enjoyment.

This is a solid dystopian novel with a sophis­ti­cated story and nar­ra­tive. While I didn’t love it (hence the 8 rat­ing), I would cer­tainly rec­om­mended it for all dystopian lovers. Inside Out is def­i­nitely one of the stronger YA books out there of its genre.