Book Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

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. - Goodreads

After all the hype surrounding this debut YA novel, I was a little nervous about starting it. I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my extremely high expectations, and I’d be disappointed, after spending so much money on it. 

I was wrong to worry though. 

Across the Universe was an amazing read. The plot started off slowly - for me - but it was still enough to pull me in. The first few chapters were spent introducing the reader to the new world inside the spaceship Godspeed. The technology and life there was so interesting, and my favourite part of the novel - apart from the murder mystery! - was probably reading about how the people of Godspeeds’ life is now. 

The plot picks up very quickly after the main female protagonist, Amy is awoken from her centuries long sleep by someone who is running around the ship and trying to kill the frozen people. 

The two main characters, Amy and Elder, are very interesting. Amy is from Earth, and has no idea about life on Godspeed. Elder was born and raised on the ship, yet he hasn’t really discovered the whole truth about what goes on in it. 

The chapters alternated between Amy and Elder’s points of view, and although this was only my second time reading a YA book set out this way, I loved it. I loved knowing what each character was thinking, and what they were both doing - something we wouldn’t know if it was from one person’s POV. And yet, even though we were inside their heads, there was still so much to discover!

All in all, the story gripped me from the word go, and I was unable to put this book down. For a story of almost 400 pages, it went surprisingly fast! The ending was outstanding, and it was so much fun trying to figure out who the killer was until the very end. Outstanding.

Rating: 5/5

You can buy Across the Universe here:

Amazon US | Book Depository

Series: Across the Universe #1

Published on January 11, 2011 by Razorbill

Edition: Hardback; 398 pages