Across the Universe

Across the Universe (Across the Universe #1) by Beth Revis
Released: January 11, 2011
Penguin: Razorbill
ISBN13: 9781595143976

4/5 Stars

Goodreads Synopsis:
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.

 I have no idea why I waited so long to finally get around to reading this one, because it was awesome. But the important thing is that I finally picked it up (probably because I have Million Suns ARC so I can get right into the second one... I hate waiting for sequels to come out. I tend to read series all at once) and LOVED it!

Beth Revis accurately captures feeling so well in her writing- the beginning of Across the Universe starts with the cyro freezing process, and it's downright creepy. I was actually squirming in my seat at the descriptions, and it's no wonder Amy felt so frightened by it at 17 years old.

I also find the idea of being frozen in time, only to wake up too far in the future to be terrifying. There's something about it that just feels so... lonely. Even if you're with people, it's like waking up to an entirely different world. Nothing like what you left. So needless to say, I thought the premise of this book was fantastic.

Also, this book is completely filled with twists in turn which make it so much fun! Some of them were expected and fairly predictable, but many others were not. I just didn't see some of them coming. The description really doesn't lie when it says that Godspeed is full of secrets and lies.

I always appreciate books with a good love story, but one that doesn't overpower everything else going on in the book and the interest between Amy and Elder is gradual, and doesn't take their focus away from uncovering as many secrets as they can.

I also loved the ending and how neatly Revis tied up a few less ends, but at the same time she had also introduced some new problems which will easily lead into the sequel. Satisfying endings are a must, but I didn't feel as if everything had been dealt with already so there would need new topics to be introduced in order for the series to continue. Luckily, that isn't the case here.

Across the Universe is, at a very basic level, a mystery whodunnit style novel; the enclosed space of the Godspeed made some parts move a bit slower than I would have liked, but the characters were rich (especially Harley, he was just wonderful) but I'd love to see more development from Elder in the future books.