A review by impasta_syndrome
Across the Universe by Beth Revis

4.0

As a forewarning, this book has nothing to do with the Beatles.
Amy has a decision to make. This decision isn’t something as simple as what to get for lunch or even what she wants to do after high school. This choice will change her future entirely with no going back. Earth is running out of resources. There has been a new planet found that can provide what the people of Earth need to survive. The catch is that it takes 300 years to travel to this planet. Once there, a government will have to be set up to run the planet. In order for this to work, government officials and biology experts must be recruited to be frozen for three centuries in order to reach the new world and help their home. Amy doesn’t work for the military or in a natural science field, but her parents both do. She is nonessential to the mission. Her decision is to choose whether she should leave her home, her friends, her boyfriend, and everything she knows behind. She must do this in order to stay with her parents.
She makes her choice to be frozen with her parents and trust the ship workers to take care of her and her family. Then, she ends up being woken up 50 years early. She wasn’t awoken because they arrived early; she was unplugged and left to drown in the liquid that kept her frozen for over two centuries. She is rescued by the soon to be leader of the ship. She soon finds out that the people of the ship aren’t like the friends she left behind, though. Here, the people are monoethnic. They were born to all look and act the same. The only people she can befriend are the ones considered insane by the rest of the ship. Insane is normal and normal makes no sense at all to Amy. She must learn to survive on the ship, though, because she can’t be refrozen.
She becomes friends with her savior, Edler, and his best friend Harley. They work together to solve the mystery of her rude awakening. They find the ship is based on lies. No one but the sole ruler of the ship knows the truth, and he isn’t telling anyone his or the ship’s secrets.
This story is told from the two perspectives of Amy and Elder. I think the book is quite well written and excels at keeping the reader constantly interested and waiting for more. There is no real lull in the middle of the book like is seen in other science fiction. While the target market is teens, I would recommend that the reader should be a more mature younger reader or at least in high school. Some readers might be off put by the more intimate or violent scenes. While this is so, I do think this book is a great read. 4/5 stars.