Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Publication Date: 1-11-2011

Publisher: Razorbill

Pages: 416
Format: Hardcover

Source: Purchased
Challenge: TBR Challenge

Goodreads / Amazon

Goodreads Summary:

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.

Amy is a 17-year old girl who has been frozen aboard a spaceship.  She is considered one of the “expendables”.  She isn’t necessary for a government or military of the future.  Amy is on the ship because her parents were important to the cause.  Amy learns a lot about herself when she is awakened too soon from her chamber.  Someone was trying to kill her, and is now trying to kill others who have been frozen too.  Amy is concerned her parents could be next, and doesn’t quite understand the dynamics of the ship.  Amy learns more about this ship than she ever expected to know.

One person is in charge, Eldest, and the rest of the ship follows.  After all of this time the people on the ship have the same features.  There is not a difference in race anymore.  Amy looks entirely out of place on this spaceship.  This was a great sci-fi/dystopian novel that had so many twists and turns I was captivated! I couldn’t put it down. Revis did an amazing job of telling a fresh new story.  This isn’t one that we’ve heard before.  Sure, it has a little bit of a love story, but ultimately it is thrilling and original novel. 

Beth Revis takes us out of our comfort zone and puts us in an entirely new situation.  We are learning more about this ship and the reason behind it, which of course, is money.  I don’t know exactly what I expected from this novel, but I didn’t expect Earth to be okay.  I thought there would be a world-ending reason as to why these people would be leaving.  This 300 year trip to a new planet is thrilling and mysterious.  I don’t think you could even begin to guess who the murderer would be.