Brilly!

Across the Universe
By: Beth Revis
Reported by: Juli Helms

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.

Whoever created the word "genre" obviously hasn't read Across the Universe. This book, as to quote Melissa Marr (Author of Wicked Lovely): "erases genre boundaries with a murder mystery, a budding romance, and a dystopian world gracefully integrated into a sci-fi novel that blows away all expectation."

I concur with you 100%, Ms. Marr.

Across the Universe is a stunning ride. The first time I heard of it, I went on Ms. Revis's website and read the first chapter. And I bawled. I BAWLED. Do you know how hard it is to make me bawl with a book? Really, REALLY hard. And it was with that that I bought Across the Universe and read it in one sitting. The characters were so unique, with such distinct personalities, and the setting was so realistically described that for a while, I was a passenger on Godspeed. The book was absolutely mesmerizing. And the scariest part of all? I felt like this could actually happen.

But the best part of it all was the twists. I did guess the murderer, but the other major twists in the book completely threw me off guard. If you have read my previous reviews, you know that I can guess plot lines pretty easily--which means any book that can surprise me is really, really surprising. And this book didn't surprise me once. It didn't surprise me twice. It surprised me THREE times! THREE! Wow, that's a record. I'm shocked.

However, there is something I didn't like about this book. I felt like the beginning was too slow. Yes, the first chapter was extremely compelling, but for the next ten chapters or so I was drumming my fingers and telling Elder to hurry up so he can meet Amy and the plot can start already. But when that happened, everything escalated back up to exceed my expectations, so don't worry too much about it.

P.S. The dual jacket is SO cool! I don't think I've ever seen one like it before, or have, but just didn't realize it was a dual jacket.

P.P.S. You guys do know brilly is the Godspeed word for brilliant, right?