My Review: So this one was a bit tough for me. It was well written and the stories were intriguing but I was left so confused. The book is a series of novellas and while I realize that they feature characters and settings from A Human Element I feel at a loss as to what is really going on. I have not read A Human Element so I don't know if reading that first would have helped or not but I would hope so. I really did enjoy the story of the imprisoned man (X-10)who was a science experiment but I needed more. I was left hanging. He just got his first taste of physical contact with a woman and we see how he responds to the experience but then she's gone and he's alone and thats it. I needed more. An attempted escape or something, I don't know.

In the first story with the boy who loves a girl at school but she ignores him and his home life sucks and then his mom dies and his Dad finally sends out some random olive branch because his son caught him cheating...It was so confusing and unrealistic for me. I mean his Dad finds him in the well where his Mom's dead body is and you don't get any of that. The story doesn't show weather he see's his wife or if the son tells his Dad that she is dead and I kind of needed that instead of a 'son take my hand, we can work this out even though you just saw me banging your aunt' (not an actually excerpt from the book) It just didn't do it for me.

Again, the book is extremely well written. If it was longer and gave me more background information as well as more detail in their experiences I'm sure I'd love it but I needed well, more. It was just o-kay for me. I may need to go back and read A Human Element, this just didn't leave me satisfied and that irritates me. I did like the stories! I'm hoping A Human Element will clear up the confusion though so my recommendation would be to read the first book before reading the novellas.

Rating: I give The Dark Inside 3 out of 5 stars.
It was o-kay. I didn't love it, nor did I hate it. I finished it which means I liked it a little it just left me a little disappointed and confused.

I can't quite put my finger on exactly how I feel about this short story collection. I loved Ms. Galanti's book A Human Element and for me, this was just a little something to tide me over until the next book comes out.

So here are just a few thoughts on this collection. For the most part I didn't know who the characters in the stories were. There were a couple that I did know and because of that those stories were my favorite, especially the one with Felix. Every story dealt with pretty dark subject matter and while I realize that this is the point of the collection the fact that so many of them revolve around some sort of sexual abuse/assault bothered me.

I think that if you enjoyed A Human Element and you like Ms. Galanti's writing style then you may want to pick this one up. It's not detrimental to the story, although you do get a glimpse of previous, possibly life altering moments in the lives of both Felix and X-10. Each of the stories is well crafted, they are written from differing POV's and some are more in depth while some are just short little bursts of action. They are all steeped in darkness, though, so beware!