Books I've Read: Inside Her by Lisa J Evans

I'd give it a solid **** 4-stars.

And yesterday I finished this… I was instructed by my wife not to discuss my issues with AI* when talking about this book. So… AI aside, here’s my thoughts.

“Inside Her” is a book that everyone on Facebook was talking about so I decided to give it a whirl. I even told my friend about it before I dove in. She finished it all in one sitting but I took a little longer—more like a weekend.

The story is about an woman, who was always curious about being a lesbian but after being assaulted as a child, she grew up thinking she needed a man to protect her from bad people. Unfortunately, the bad people were the ones protecting her. She was engaged to a man who verbal and mentally abused her and she lived with it. UNTIL… she found a woman who she fell head over heels for.

In life, and in this story, there is a lot of pressure to come out and live your truth. And while the main character, Jess, wanted to live that… she was also afraid. So true to life. She had jumped from one straight relationship to another that she never really had the chance to be single and mingle. Again, very true to life.

This presents a problem when Jess is forced to decide to settle into a lesbian relationship—fully and completely out—or to take time to process and live a little.

I completely, 100% understand this. In my own life, once I had my first official girlfriend and we were living with each other, my mind said exactly what Jess said… WHAT IF?

I think the story of “Inside Her” hit home in many ways. The character was obsessive, like me, though I am not nearly as neurotic. She cratered into a spiraling pit of depression because of not being able to be with someone; she rather choose death over living alone. Again, that was part of my past too. Therefore, I connected with it.

I guess my dislikes about the book as a whole was the author spent too much time—too many chapters—saying the same thing, over and over. Early on when the two main characters meet there is tons and tons of sex. And while this happens in real life, I felt that we didn’t need 4-5 chapters of the same three days of constant sex. Then again, when we know Jess is spiraling and she is replaying out the events of the destruction of her relationship with Georgia, we spend way too much time suffering with her in a way that is was just annoying.

Jess was annoying. Very annoying. But the story was a good one, overall. It is definitely worth the read—my friend said she balled her eyes out at the end. I did not because during those moments of joy/happiness, I was too busy rolling my eyes at the blatant AI paragraphs. Just saying.

*I do not believe the entire book was written by a computer, there are moments when I could tell the paragraph(s) were paraphrased enough to hit the AI-detectors (my eyes can spot that a mile away). It wasn’t enough to distract from a good story.

And that’s my story… and I’m sticking to it.