Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Release Date: January 11th, 2011

Publisher: Razorbill

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 398

Source: Library

Series: Across the Universe (Book #1)

Challenge: Debut Author Challenge (hosted by The Story Siren)

Summary (goodreads.com): A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

My Review:

Four pages into Across the Universe I was ridiculously creeped out. Being Frozen alive is one of the worst things ever, its just too awful to even contemplate. The first chapter almost made me think it was too science fiction-y to go on, but hoping it would get better I kept reading and I’m really glad I did. This ended up being a sort of murder mystery in a space ship type thing. It wasn’t until the end that I decided I really did like this book and that when the sequel comes out that I really want to know what happens. I really liked Elder and Harley, two of the people on the Godspeed. I liked Elder because he really didn’t know much about what was happening whether it was on the ship or in his head. He’s one of the characters that people either love or hate, I love him. My Favorite character is Harley the artist though. He’s just so awesome! I love how he calls Amy Little Fish. Without Harley I’m sure I would have given up on this book and never finished it (never realizing its potential if I had quit). He’s such a tragic character though, you can see how hard his life is and how hard he’s trying to be okay, but he’s not. This book reinforced my belief of never going in a spaceship though. People on this spaceship are Insane, with a capital I. I wouldn’t have been able to handle being cooped up on a ship like that, never seeing the sky or breathing fresh air. I’m not claustrophobic, but reading this book made me claustrophobic. I’ve never felt trapped inside a book. Revis is really good at describing, well everything, from settings to emotions and physical features of the characters. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to try out something different.