Book Nerds Across America

"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." (from Goodreads)

As soon as I finished reading Across the Universe, I tweeted the author Beth Revis that it was a "Whoa!" kind of book. She responded with, "That's what I was going for!"

So:  Whoa!

I took me awhile to get into it. I struggled because it is a science fiction book, and sci fi is not a genre I usually enjoy. But it's not just as sci fi book -- it's a young adult book and a dystopian book, and I think unique the combination of these three factors is what gives the book such appeal.

Elder was a character I really enjoyed. I could feel his struggles throughout the novel, and I admired the choices that he made because I could see that they were hard, but right.  I also really enjoyed Harley. And Eldest. Oh my gosh, Eldest! Every time I learned something new about him or discovered something else I thought, "Oh. My. Gosh!" 

While one aspect of the ending didn't surprise me, the rest did. And left me going, "Whoa!" 

A Million Suns, the sequel, is due out next year. I actually felt that Across the Universe reached a conclusive ending, so I am curious to see what else will happen on Godspeed.

~Flo~