Inside Out - Maria V. Snyder

Trella, a scrub, lives in the lower level of the inside. A huge metal box separated into two levels: the lower two levels where the scrubs live their miserable lives cleaning and working and the two upper level where the uppers live controlling the the scrubs and living a better life. The scrubs and the uppers have no contact with each other except the Pop Cop who enforce the scrubs.

Trella is taught that the upper level inhabitants have comfy lives and to be jealous of them. But when she runs into an upper, she begins to find out that the uppers lifes are not what exactly like how they taught her in school. She begins to find out that maybe they want the same thing as her.

Everything turns for the worst, for Trella, when she tries to prove a prophet wrong that there is no gateway to the Outside. The Outside, where no one has been and everyone wishes to be. The scrub want the outside to be true so they can get away from their miserable lives. So, Trella tries to prove him wrong by finding the prophets hidden CD that show the way to the Gateway. But one small mistake leads Trella into a cat and mouse game in order to find the Gateway before the ones in charge destroy her and her friends.

Great book! I saw some of the twist coming before they came. But the ending wasn't what I expected. Throughout the whole book it leaves you guessing what the Outside really is. Trella is a great character, she is an outsider, with not very many friends. You really get to see her character develop as the story continues on. There are a lot of great characters in this book. I could not put the book down, I kept wanting to read it find out what happened to Trella!

This book reminds me alot of the book The City of Embers by Jeanne DuPrau and the book Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. Both books, like Inside out has the characters looking for away out of their isolated world.