Book Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Picture credit: Mine!

So I’m going to change the way I do book reviews.

Turns out, at least this year, my choices of what to read have been pretty stupendous, because ever since I’ve started writing reviews I’ve read books that I thought deserved five stars. Call me soft or just really good at choosing good books, but it doesn’t help you guys if I rate every book the same way.

So! Rather than rating every book on a number of stars, I’m just going to tell you guys what I did and didn’t like about it and whether or not I recommend it. Fair? I thought so. To sweeten the pot, if you still want a numeric rating, you can friend me on Goodreads, where I will still be handing out the sparkly golden stars.

Onto the review!

I’ll start off by saying that I don’t normally read sci-fi, so if you’re not a hard-core sci-fi lover, don’t give up on this one yet—in fact, Across the Universe is the first sci-fi-ish book I’ve read in years.

So if I don’t read sci-fi, why did I pick up this book? Truth be told, the cover had a lot to do with it—it caught my eye on the shelf and I picked it up and liked the summary, and the first chapter. Not only that, but I read Beth Revis’ blogand she seemed like a pretty cool author. Plus she interacts on both Twitterand tumblr which is a pretty nice bonus if you ask me.

So what’s the book about, you ask?

From Goodreads:

“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 really enjoyed this book. I was worried that it might be too spacey for my tastes (since, as I said, I don’t often read sci-fi), but Across the Universe had me hooked. There’s a murder mystery, romance that isn’t overdone (which, I have to say, is pretty refreshing) and some memorable characters. The only thing that bothered me was the dual-POV—the book is told both from Amy and Elder’s alternating first person POV, which was a little difficult to adjust to at first, but I actually enjoyed it later on. In fact, the dual POV really made the ending particularly fantastic stylistically, in my opinion.

Oh, and have I mentioned the twists? There aren’t many books that have surprised me like Across the Universe did, and I can count on one hand how many book surprised me more than once (Across the Universe, of course, being one of them).

Mystery. Romance. Twists. I highly recommend this one. It’s a great read and I’m definitely looking forward to the sequel.

So I’ve got to ask—what are you guys reading right now?