Review: Across the Universe

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Date of Publication: January 11, 2011

Formats Available: Hardcover, Paperback, E-book

Buy This Book: Amazon

Synopsis: 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.

My Review:

Every bad thing I've heard about this book is 100% true: is the plot transparent? yes. Is the world building full of holes? yes. Are the characters whiny and stupid? yes. But did I like this novel? yes. Although I agree with every bad thing said about this novel I still enjoyed it. Something about it entertained me and kept turning pages even though I was rolling my eyes half the time.

I knew exactly where this novel was going. I knew who did it from the very beginning and figuring out why they were doing it wasn't hard either, but it was more about the ride to get there than the actual revelation itself. I think what entertained me most was the interactions between characters, even though none of them had a shred of intelligence it was fun watching them try to figure out what was going on and interact with each other. Likewise I was interested in the day to day running of the ship and, maybe I just wasn't paying too much attention, but some of the revelations about the ship and it's inhabitants did up surprising me.

Though this novel is portrayed as a romance it's anything but, and it didn't really bother me. Honestly, between Elder and Amy any sort of romance would have been painful to read anyway so I'm thankful nothing developed between them. Both Amy and Elder bumbled around the ship trying to solve a mystery but not really getting anywhere at all. Truth be told I really wish Amy and Harley would have ended up together; Harley was the most decent character in the story, though his intelligence was also a bit questionable.

Despite how much I enjoyed this novel overall there was one thing that bothered me, the season. While it didn't really effect me all that much at first, the more I started to think about it the more disgusted I felt. This is a novel for teens, there could be a thirteen year old out there reading this and there are basically orgies taking place on the streets. As an adult, reading about people having sex on the streets was a little weird, but not a deal breaker. However, this is not a book I would give to anyone under the age of seventeen so I had to knock a few points off for that.

Across the Universe was an entertaining read and even though there's so many reasons I shouldn't like it, I still do anyway. I'm interested to see where Revis goes with this series and eventually I plan to get my hands on the next two in the series. Even though it wasn't the best something about this series really captured me and I'm excited to see where it goes.

4/5