Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe
by Beth Revis
Pages: 398
Released: January 11, 2010

Across the Universe 
Summary: Amy is only seventeen-years-old when she is frozen along with her parents and thousands of others. They are to remain frozen for 300 more years until they reach a new planet where they will create another life there. Aboard the ship, 50 years later, Amy is unfortunately awakened by and her life is nearly threatened. Luckily for her, she is rescued just in time.

After this incident, the murderer continues to awaken more passengers on the ship. Along with Elder, the ship's future leader, they embark on a journey to find the killer while discovering many hidden secrets on the ship.Will they find the murder in time before he strikes again? And what secrets will be revealed along their journey?

My Thoughts: I went into this book expecting an amazing story (from all the good reviews I've read), but I've got to say that I was a bit disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the plot sounds amazing and Revis's concept was no doubt original.


What I liked: Let me first start off by saying what I liked about the book. The idea behind this book was great, I love a good dystopian novel and a little bit of romance as well. This book brought those two elements together pretty well. I also liked how it alternates between each chapter--one would be in Amy's perspective and  the other in Elder's. The passengers were a unique aspect of the book how they were all the same race and their reactions to some situations. I also liked Revis writing in a sense that it was a good page turner because I wanted to find out what happened next.

What I disliked: Here's what I didn't like about the book. Ok, take the love story for instance, I felt it was a bit weak and the characters were only drawn to each other because of their appearance. (e.g. Elder only seemed to like Amy because she had red hair, ivory skin, green eyes, and her body and Amy liked that Elder was had broader shoulders and was taller than her boyfriend and was good looking) They also didn't spend as much time together as I thought they should have and I would have liked to see them in the same scene more. Revis tries to make the story mysterious but it was just way too obvious for me, but perhaps that's just me. The twists weren't really climatic you could say because I felt she just threw them into the book, but I didn't feel that it had a strong impact on the characters or story. Another thing is her writing was good, but it seemed as though she tried too hard to make each chapter end some hard-hitting note, and it was just unnecessary. I also thought that Amy was twelve at times and Elder... *sigh*... the way he described Amy and thought about her was not very romantic I would say. There are also some subtle explicit parts in the book, and even though they were subtle, I think that Revis could have just mentioned them instead of describing them.

Conclusion: All in all, I am going to read the next book in this series to find out what happens because like I said, the plot is very intriguing to me. I don't mean to give this book such a harsh review because it has pretty high ratings on Amazon and GoodReads, so I think that it's just my preference.

3/5 stars


Source: Bought.