Review of Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Interest: Debut Author Challenge, storyline: people frozen on a spaceship

Released: January 11, 2011

398 Pages, hardcover

Summary: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.

Summary from Goodreads.com

Alright, I held off on reviewing Across the Universe for a few weeks because I did not know what to think.  It was hyped to be one of the best books out this year, the storyline was really intriguing, but I found myself disappointed by the story.  Time has helped me sort out why.  For me, it was the romance.  I love good YA romances.  In Across the Universe, I am sorry to say, there was not a romance.  Normally, I would not be too upset about this, but the blurb led me to believe there would be: “A love out of time.  A spaceship built of secrets and murder.”  I felt misled, and let down when there was not a love story.

Now, if I take those emotions out of the equation, AtU was a great story!  It was science fiction meets dystopian literature.  The world that Revis created (right down to a ship map inside the dust cover) was impressive.  That is one thing I love about dystopian books: the new world, presumably created based on our actions and/or mistakes.  The world on Godspeed is one that will make you cringe.  People are docile and vacant.  Those who are not are considered crazy.  Children aren’t born out of love, but because it is “the season”, and people mate like animals in the middle of the sidewalk. 

It’s a strange new world.  It grows even stranger when cryogenically frozen people are being taken out early: to awaken or die.  Amy wakes up.  Elder (the teenaged future leader of Godspeed) is immediately drawn to her.  As he watches her reactions to his society he starts to actually question how and why things are done on the ship.  He also works with Amy in a race to protect the other “frozens” and discover who is trying to kill them.

Overall, Across the Universe was very well done.  Just think don’t think of it as a romance, and you should be satisfied :)

Cover: 10/10 Love the colors, the contrast, the faces, the stars.  It fits for the book too.

Plot: 9/10

Characters: 8/10

Ending: 9/10

Overall Enjoyment: 7/10

Score: 84% B

PG-13 Not much language as the characters use future curses, sexuality described in terms of human “mating” on the ship, and a near rape