REVIEW: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe
Beth Revis
400 pages
Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: January 1st, 2011
Source: Publisher for review

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.

Unputdownable.

Unbelievable.

Unlike any book you'll ever pick up.

As author Beth Revis herself states: Across the Universe is sci-fi for teens who don't like sci-fi.

   I LOVE science fiction, but I think the young-adult genre is lacking good sci-fi, big time. So I was really excited when Across the Universe showed up on my doorstep on a gloomy day, but I had to hold my breath for a month just so I could read it in 2011 for the Debut Author Challenge. It was worth the wait though - I never wanted it to end!

   I have to admit, its not one of those books that grab you from the very first page. But after the first few chapters, I was hooked. The plot was incredible, I'm not sure how Beth Revis came up with it! Along with sci-fi, it has a lot of mystery mixed in too, and you'll find yourself lying in bed trying to figure out who's behind all the madness. All of the characters were likeable, even the bad ones. They all had their part to the story, and all of them fit in well.

   Amy is frozen, along with her mother and father to wake up three centuries in the future on a new planet. Something goes wrong, and Amy is unplugged and nearly dies as the liquid melts. Who did this to her? And why are they unplugging some of the others too? Amy, Elder (the next heir of the ship), Eldest (the current leader of the ship), and the Doctor are all struggling to find out, before more frozens are unplugged and left to drown to their deaths. But Amy and Elder find out other things, and begin to realize Godspeed (the ship they're on) is fueled by more than an engine - by lies. How many lies and horrors will they uncover? You just have to read it to find out.

   Lucky for you, Across the Universe will be released in a few days (on 1/11/11) rather than the first scheduled release date in March, so you'll be able to feel what I felt the whole time - breathless and on the edge of your seat.