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.
(Summary from GoodReads)
I’ve been eager to read Across the Universe by Beth Revis since before it came out. After all, the original hardcover is stunning and there isn’t a lot of straight-up sci fi in YA. I wound up finally picking this one up when my book club selected it. While I found Revis’s prose lovely, I didn’t fall in love with her debut the way I had hoped to.
Across the Universe is kind of a terrifying read. It starts off with one of our main characters, Amy, being frozen, and then waking up way earlier than she’s meant to. The story is told from her point of view, as well as a boy named Elder, who’s destined to become the leader of the ship. I didn’t connect especially well with Amy, partially because it felt as though she waffled between irritatingly headstrong or too weak.
The plot of this one was okay. It erred on predictable and maybe even a bit cheesy. There is romance between Amy and Elder, but it felt too much like insta-love to me.
My favorite part of Across the Universe was definitely the writing. Revis’s prose is truly lovely. Although I’ll try to continue this series, I’d much more content to read something that Revis wrote in a different genre.
Revis’s debut novel is just “meh” for me. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I’ll probably give a shot, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for other types of books from Revis.
Disclosure: I purchased a copy of this book.
Other reviews:
Yeah, the plot wasn't a complete winner for me but I've heard a lot of good things about the sequel (how often does that happen?) so I want to check that out before rendering a final judgment on Revis' stories. Can't remember my feelings on the writing as it's been a while.
Reply