Review : Across The Universe by Beth Ravis

Title : Across The Universe
Author : Beth Ravis
Published : January 2011 by Razorbill 

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

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 -goodreads

WOW! WOW! WOW! Beth Ravis, you are amazing! This is my kind of book. It is so good and I hardly put it down. I finished this book only in 1.5 days. Since English is not my first language so 1.5 days counted fast for me to finish a novel. First of all the cover is so pretty. With the siluet of a girl and a boy with universe image at the background, I knew immediately the main story is about a boy meet girl but not in regular boring way and the main setting is outside the Earth.


At first we are introduced to Amy.. She and her family are still on Earth and getting ready to be froze and board on a spaceship that will land on a new "Earth" in 3 centuries. Second chapter onwards, the setting change to the spaceship called Godspeed and there we meet Elder. A boy who is prepared to be the future leader of the ship. One day he finds a secret level in the ship and there he meets the frozen Amy among other frozen humans from Earth. Short story Amy is awake by an unknown person and that is the start of the main story. Someone tries to kill the frozen humans. Amy and Elder are trying to find who is behind the killing and they have to stop him.

I like how Beth Ravis describe all Amy's feeling during the frozen process in the first chapter. The description is so detail so that it felt like I can really feel what Amy feel. Not only that, I also can feel almost every condition in the spaceship Ravis write in the book. For example, the air in the spaceship is a re-use air that have been used for centuries. That's not exactly how Ravis describe it but from the way she write about the air, when I read that part, I could feel the centuries old air around me and I breathe to it. All my five senses were alive. Incredible! I often experienced goosebumps when I read this book. The story is so intense ever since the first chapter and the end of every chapter always makes me wondering : what's next???

The book has 2 points of view, Amy's, the lead female and Elder's, the lead male of the story. The point of view changes in every chapter, that make it more interesting and not boring. I can feel how different a male and female perspective toward the same happening. I am a fan of dystopian novel but not a big fan of sci-fi stories but Across The Universe had grab me by the heart. The other plus point is for a non English native like me, the language used in this book is quite easy to understand.

What I don't like about this book is the killer is easy to predict. I was hoping that Ravis surprises the audiences and the killer is not who I thought it would be, but it was a fail hope. The good side is eventhough I knew who might be the killer, still, I could enjoy every happening and every moment until the end. When the killer revealed, I didn't feel disappointed that much. Overall this book is brilliant and I LOVE IT!


My rating : 5/5