Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Release Date - January 11, 2011
Publisher - Razorbill
Pages - 398
My Rating 7/10

Here is the 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 was a little unsure picking up this book as I am not normally into science fiction. I am so glad I did. The science fiction aspect of it was not at all what I was expecting.

Right from the first couple of pages where Amy is describing the freezing process I was hooked. The freezing sounded painful, excruciating and very unpleasant to go through. The author had me feeling each part of the process as Amy felt it.

I was very hooked by the whole “who is the killer” mystery. I was able to guess who it was pretty early on in the book but was pleasantly surprised by a couple of twists towards the end of the book that I did not see coming. I love it when books are able to surprise me. I liked the premise that it was only a select few people who had access to commit the crimes. It made it feel like the classic “locked room” scenario but with a twist. The fact that a few people were initially good suspects also made it more interesting.

Amy was a great character. She was strong, and very capable. She also seemed very “real”. She seemed like a typical girl caught in some crazy circumstances. I also really liked Harley. I may have been the only one but I sort of wanted Amy and Harley to get together. Harley was the tortured artist that I sadly find attractive.

I was glad that we got to see Elder’s point of view as well. If we had not seem his side of things I may not have liked him. I did think that his feelings and thoughts about Amy were very romantic and sweet. In the end I just did not get attached to him as much as I did with Amy or Harley.

With the events of the book taking place on the ship the whole book had a very claustrophobic feel which I felt the author did a fantastic job of making you experience and feel. You really got how isolated and closed off the people of the ship were and it helped explain some of their actions. I know that I could never do what Amy did and sign up to go into space. I am pretty sure I would have a nervous breakdown or something.

If you are at all leery about picking this one up because of the science fiction aspect I say give it a chance anyways. It’ll surprise you and you might even enjoy it.