Across the Universe by Beth Revis

I just finished this tonight :)

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.

One word. Fantastic!

In all honesty I didn’t know what to expect from this book once I picked it up and began to read. I am always apprehensive about reading books that are surrounded by a fair amount of hype – as this one has through facebook, twitter and blogs. I am always backward about coming forwards with such books in case I find them to be a let-down, but I am so glad that I pushed my apprehension aside, bit the bullet and cracked open the first page of Across the Universe.

This book tapped into my emotions at such a speed and in a way that I have never experienced before in a book. Usually it takes me a little while to get into the swing of a new ‘universe’ if you like, but that was not this case here. I was dragged straight into the action and caught hook, line and sinker.

I felt  my agitation and discomfort rise s Amy made each of her decisions and her terror at being trapped and frozen lay heavy in my chest as though it was my own fear.

I was nearly crying on more than one occasion and I can feel my chest tightening now as I type.

This is not a light and fluffy novel, it is pretty stressful from the get-go and it stays that way but that was what kept me reading and turning those pages. I wanted to find out the truth as badly as Amy did.

The characters were believable and so real that at no point did I find myself rolling my eyes in disgust at some stupid action that seemed out of character. Everything fit and ran smoothly. Amy was a smart, mature heroine who did not mope and wallow over her situation or expect anyone else to solve things for her. She jumped right in and faced ever issue that came along.

Elder was a brilliant male lead, who was intelligent and caring – and coincidently came out with some of my favourite lines from the book.

As I said this is not a ponies and rainbows type book. There is murder, suicide, attempted rape, vague sex mentioned – not graphic and dealing with adults. It also deals with issue on moral grounds. How far is too far when hose is power want to control the masses? Does a person live out their usefulness? Lots of dilemma filled goodness.

5 out of 5 (in case you haven’t guessed that already)