Outside In | Maria V Snyder | Review by Anjali

Outside In | Maria V Snyder | Review by Anjali

• Sunday, 15 June 2014

I did a brief review of the first of this series, Inside Out, on my blog the other day,  and Niina reviewed it last year, so you can jump back to that post and see what she thought. While I won't say too much about this, the second of the Insiders series by Maria V. Snyder, I will say that I did enjoy it.

Outside In continues the story of Trella the scrub. In the aftermath of the rebellion and the change of how things happen on the Inside, Trella continues to learn more and more about her world and the people in it. She explores even more of Inside than she thought was possible and discovers things she doesn't understand, meets people she never thought she would meet, and sees things that she could never really imagine before.

Outside In introduces some new characters to the world we read about in Inside Out, and I actually liked them enough to care if they died (that's kinda how I judge the coolness of characters...Would I care if they were suddenly slaughtered, murdered or fell off a cliff?). Trella was a pain in the butt in the first third of the book and I just got annoyed at her all the time, but thankfully her friends were pretty nifty characters so that made up for her.

The love interest, Riley, was cute in my head, but was super lame on paper. He was a strong sort of character in that he knew what he was doing and he just wanted the best for people etc etc - you know, all those good qualities in a dystopian male love interest - but he was just a little lame. He had a soft toy sheep called Sheepy for goodness sake! Cute if you're like...10 years old, but not when you're 17/18. And it wasn't like it was a one time 'here's my childhood toy, isn't it cute' kinda thing. It was mentioned nearly every conversation he had with Trella. So that was frustrating...but if you took out that, then it was okay.

The story went in a direction I wasn't really prepared for, in that the Inside, where they live, wasn't what I thought it was. But I think I was okay with that? I haven't really decided, to be honest, but there we have it. I don't know what else to say without giving anything else away, but it was a good second book, and while I have no idea if there's a third on or not (I can't seem to find it on Good Reads), if there was, I'd read it. I think if you read Inside Out, then you have to Outside In. It does answers questions and round some things off nicely.

This review was written by regular reviewer Anjali, get to know her here. 
Image from Good Reads.