Review: Across The Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Age Group/Genre: Young Adult/Sci-Fi/Dystopian
Publisher: Razorbill
My Copy:  ARC/paperback/398 pages
Source: Author
My Rating: 5 stars

Buy the Book: Amazon

From the back cover:
Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed.  She expects to wake up on a new planet, 300 years in the future.  But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, Amy’s cryo chamber is unplugged, and she is nearly killed.

Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense.  Godspeed’s passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his rebellious and brilliant teenage heir.

Amy desperately wants to trust Elder.  But can she?  All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

My review:

I agree with the blurb on the back cover that states, “Across the Universe is Titanic meets Brave New World.”  I would describe it as a science fiction, dystopian mystery.  It is the story of Amy who is cryogenically frozen and traveling through space to her new destination: a new, unexplored planet called Centauri-Earth, 300 years away.  She expects to wake up on this new planet with her parents, but something goes wrong and she wakes up 50 years too early and can’t be refrozen.  Now, she is stuck on the spaceship with a strange group of people, who work to keep the spaceship running and on course.  She meets Elder, the next in line to rule the people aboard the ship and they both soon find out that the spaceship is filled with mystery, secrets, and danger.

I gave this novel 5 stars.  I have never been a huge sci-fi fan, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one!  One of the things that made it so enjoyable for me was that the author made it believable.  The characters were realistic and the world that the author created was incredible.  I really felt for Amy and Elder, and I felt that I was really there watching all of this take place.  It brought out a range of emotions in me: sympathy for Amy, Elder, and Harley; curiosity and fascination with the world of Godspeed; anticipation for what would happen next, and finally contentment with the ending.

This book tells the story from both Amy and Elder’s point-of-views, and I liked that.  Before I began reading, I didn’t realize it was going to be so full of mystery and the twists towards the end were great!  This book really threw me for a loop and kept me guessing all the way through!  I really liked the ending and how everything played out.  The author did a wonderful job of creating an out-of-this-world story that is both believable and wildly entertaining.  It’s the perfect blend of sci-fi, dystopian, mystery, and romance and I highly recommend it.