Review of Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Book:  Across The Universe
Author:  Beth Revis
Publisher:  Razorbill
Pages:  398

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 was really excited to pick up this book.  I've heard such good things about it and I thought this was a very original story line.  A girl who is cryogenically frozen gets defrosted fifty years before her time only to wake up on a spaceship that's been traveling in outerspace for multiple centuries.  She doesn't know anyone or anything about how the spaceship is run but she's on a mission to find out some things...especially who tried to kill her. 

I have to admit I was a little scared to read this novel because I'm not really into science fiction or dystopian genres and this book was often described as both.  I had no reason to be scared, Revis did an amazing job with this novel.  It was so thought provoking that I can't wait for my friends to read it so we can discuss it. 

There are certain points of view on the spaceship about how the world was run in the past and how the community of the spaceship, Godspeed, should be run.  This is where the heart of the novel lies.  How can one have the perfect community and what does it take to be a leader to that community?  I was constantly asking myself what I would do in their situations and I still am for that matter.  You know you have a great book when you have the reader still thinking about it days or even weeks after they've read it.

I really enjoyed the character of Amy.  She gets hurtled into a new world where everything she previously knew has changed and she's just supposed to accept it.  She is definity a feisty girl who isn't scared to stand up for what she believes in.  It's nice to have a heroine be such a strong and independent character who is going to fight for what is right.

I also enjoyed Elder as a character.  At times I felt he was a little brainwashed but most of the time he stepped up to be the man he needed to be.  He was put in many difficult situations and being the leader-in-training of the spaceship made him look at the past leadership more closely.

One of my favorite things about the novel was the alternating point of view between Amy and Elder.  I loved being able to know what both of the main characters were thinking and see how they were going to react to each situation.  In many novels changing points of view can get confusing but not in this case.  Revis did a great job in keeping each of the views separate, yet both connected to the story perfectly.

Overall I think this was a very original and interesting novel and I'd give it ★★★★