Book review: Across The Universe by Beth Revis

"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."

Across The Universe is a Sci-Fi / dystopian novel, first published in January 2011 by Razorbill. It follows the story of Amy, who lives with her parents on Earth. But the Earth is in a bad condition and they are given the chance to escape and climb on board of a spaceship that will bring them to a new world. 

Her parents are chosen, based on their profession and Amy decides that she can't live on without her parents, so she joins them. 

After Amy wakes up and realizes that she is the only one, she becomes the alien of the ship. She looks different, she acts in a weird way and she doesn't really know what to do with herself. She then meets Elder, the guy who is supposed to take over the ship when Eldest, the current leader, steps down. Elder and Amy get strangled up in this awkward relationship because Amy is still confused and Elder simply admires her. They become cute and a pretty good couple, but it is obvious that they still have the struggles of a high school relationship. 

They have to solve a murder together, which gives us some exciting moments and the question whether the ship will ever land is the thing that kept me intrigued. 

Beth Revis also did a really good job describing life inside the spaceship. She uses techniques that would be logical inside a spaceship and she describes the things that need a bit more explaining. She doesn't leave words out or make it too long. She keeps it interesting and made me wonder what life inside such a ship would be like, since they established a small town inside a freaking spaceship. 

I have already read the second book in this series, called 'A Million Suns', and I'm pretty sure a review of that one will be up soon. Definitely also going to read the third one, I just really want to know how everything ends and whether the ship lands on the new planet or not.

Worth the hype? Not so much. Worth the read? Definitely. 

I gave it 4 out of 5 stars on GoodReads. 

Lots of love, 

Laurien.