There are certain movies that one watches where the individual knows the movie isn't going to win an Academy Award anytime, has some plot issues, but is still a good movie because it is a lot of fun. The Insides by Jeremy P Bushnell is the book equivalent of that movie.

The story revolves around Ollie, who at 18 decided to start dabbling in magic, not stage magic, but actual real magic. It is several years later and Ollie has broken up with her husband, left behind her child, and now works at a meat factory where her co-worker can slice and carve up meat faster and better than she can. Since she knows magic, she knows the knife he has is magically infused and she wants it.

She is not the only one who wants it though.

Maja is a professional tracker. Guided by the Archive, Maja can find anything or any person in the world through a talent that she has. She has been hired to find the magical knife and retrieve it. She is accompanied by Pig, the son of the man who hired her. He is a hitman who is not afraid to kill and wears a pig mask when he does. He eats and survives mostly on candy and Maja cannot get a read on him. There is something different about Pig.

Maja and Ollie are not too different as we will find out later and throughout the story. They both have difficult parts of their lives. They both hold onto something. They both do what they do to get by. What will happen when these two women finally meet?

What will happen when both parties go after the same object? What is so special about this knife?

Overall, The Insides is a fun book. I picked it up one night and read it almost straight through. It is weird at times, funny at other times, and is ridiculous at other times. It is a good adventure that hits good high notes and has some tense moments. It isn't deep and it is entertaining.

Where The Insides hurts itself is in some of the scenes. The Insides refers to a magical realm that can be opened and creatures live in the midst of this realm trying to protect it. The Insides, unfortunately, will not come into play until the very end and shows up in a few scenes that seem out of place. It is a plot device that didn't seem to be needed as the story would have been fine without the realm and with magic just existing in the world.

The other problem, at least for me, was the reveal of what the knife was. I am not going to spoil it, but it just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the story. We are told what it is and I sat there saying to myself- what!?! Where did that come from? If it was introduced a bit or had a connection to our protagonist, I think it might have gone down smoother as a read.

I think this is a fun book though and I feel if someone reads it the ride will be fun. I have been telling people that if I had read this book on a plane, I might have had a different take away. I would read it on a weekend afternoon when one wants to just be entertained. This is what this book is, pure entertainment, which is not a bad thing.

I gave this one 3.5 stars. ( )

It's not really like either of these things, except maybe a little, but somehow it reminded me of both Charlie Huston's novels and Lev Grossman's The Magicians. I read a book a few months ago--The War Against the Assholes which had some of the same feeling, but didn't work as well. This is dark, gritty street magic with sleazy track-suit mafia types and hipster farmers and foodies and it manages to be both satire and entertaining urban fantasy at once. ( )

Not a huge fan of audiobooks in general. I find the reader to always be fairly monotone and quite boring. This honestly was not a whole lot different for me, although I'd be remiss if I only judged/reviewed the book mainly by the narrator and not the actual content...and that wouldn't be fair to the book or to the author. Without doling out any spoilers, I will say that I surprisingly quite enjoyed the actual story. I'm not a big fan of fantasy, but this book is humorous and has some good twists. Overall, I'd say it's definitely worth the read, just maybe not the listen. ( )

THE INSIDES by Jeremy P. Bushnell came as a very great surprise to me. I hadn’t read about the book before reading it except to learn it had something to do with working in a professional kitchen. After reading this I know that is like saying Moby Dick is about fishing.
This is a book about magic that doesn’t ask you to suspend belief. It just assumes you will read the next page and then the one after that, and you do.
This book is about a knife that isn’t a knife. It is about a butcher who covets the knife of an inferior butcher but finds herself at a loss to explain why that guy cuts both faster and neater than her even though he appears to go so much slower that she.
This is about a magic hunter, a finder of things, about human evil and greed, about the loss of things we loved to the need for other things we want.
And finally it is about the love between two people, and two others and… well this book is in so many ways a love story, and the heartbreak that comes upon the realization that you are the cause of your own misery.
This is a wonderful, engrossing read by a storyteller who only asks for your attention for a few moments, just long enough for him to cast his spell.
Oh, and there is another world, or place here, that is referred to as the Insides, so don’t thing is about offal and entrails and such. This is a good/bad place where nightmares live, and also hope dwells. ( )

Well, I have mixed feelings about this book. I do like books where multiple characters are after the same thing, but I am not really a fan of magic.