REVIEW #5 - Across the Universe by Beth Revis

TITLE: Across the Universe

AUTHOR: Beth Revis

GENRE: dystopia, sci-fi, romance

PUBLICATION DATE: Jan 11th 2011

SYNOPSIS:

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.

REVIEW:

Cover

One of my favorite YA covers ever. I mean it. It's so beautiful I would buy the book the second I saw it in the bookstore. I wish it made me love the book more, though.

Plot

I was excited by the premise. I expected epic love story with sci-fi and a dash of dystopia. And I guess I got everything I mentioned, only... very toned down.
I liked how the story revolved around lies. Lies being the main theme of the story in the metaphorical sense was one of the best things about this book. And that's what makes me so conflicted about AtU.
While I liked the idea behind the dystopia presented here, there was also sub-plots I didn't really enjoy. One of them was really easy to guess (it was hinted too clearly in my opinion), the other was brushed over. The other being the whole idea of mating on the ship. There was even a rape attempt which kind of faded into black as a problem that should be resolved. That really made me upset, because I cared about the characters, but not enough to not to get frustrated at the way some of the situations were handled.

Characters

Main characters, Amy and Elder, were likeable. I don't know which one of them I liked more. Amy had this strong heroine aura around her, and Elder gave me the "adorable" feelings every once in a while. What I didn't like was the insta-love between them. I mean, really. I could see the potential romance maybe a bit further in the story, they could totally work for a while as friends, but they jumped into romance like there's no tomorrow, which put me off a bit.
I enjoyed Eldest-Doc team as the villains more than the... well, other villain I won't talk about not to spoil the story to anyone.
And Harley! Let's not forget about cute Harley. His subplot was good too.

Writing

The story is divided into two POVs, Amy's and Elder's. The writing is clear, I didn't really find it irritating like in some cases with YA books. An easy ride.

Overall

It could have been better. I was really confused and didn't know how to rate it at first, because I did like and dislike it at the same time. But, in the end, I will surely read the sequel to see how it's resolved.

Rating

2.5 stars out of 5.