"Across the Universe" by Beth Revis

From Goodreads: "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."

I find that a lot of the time when plot lines are fueled entirely by lies, like this book, it takes quite a bit of time to process fact from fiction and that a lot of time I don't have an "AHA!" moment until hours, if not days, after finishing the book (see my review of Holly Black's "White Cat"), but that didn't happen whatsoever with this book. Beth beautifully exposed every secret and tied up every single loose end (that I can recall), she put everything on the table and didn't leave it up to the reader to discern the aforementioned fact from fiction (and after a solid week of non-stop reading- yay for reading week! I really appreciated this immensely since my brain is pretty much fried).

I never really think much of female characters because either I am too focused on the boys (darn you hot book boys!) or I find that the girls don't really have a personality so that the female reader can easily insert/ envision herself in the heroine's place- but this isn't the case for Amy at all. I really liked her as a character, and bluntly put, the girl has balls (and more than her fair share of spunk). She was extremely strong and didn't just sit in the corner and whimper/ rely upon the male lead of the story when she found out that her life was pretty much collapsing around her- she took charge of the situation and clearly came out on top. 

As for Elder? Hmmmm... How to describe him (it's hard to explain him because he was such a dynamic character with his fair share of closeted skeletons)? Overall he was quite sweet and caring and because of that I was able to overlook what could be considered his downfall (and I must say that I can totally understand why he did it- just imagine if you were in his situation, I am sure that you would contemplate what he did too). I thought that his best friend Harley was also quite the character, his creativity and outlook on life was beautiful.  

Now I will say that some aspects of this story were quite predictable, like who the killer is. Other parts of the story (like the major twist at the end of the novel), I wouldn't have guessed in a million years. I do think that this book could totally be a stand-alone, however it is going to be part of a trilogy. While I am excited to see what other crazy adventures Elder and Any get themselves into I can only hope that the other books in the series are as good as this (and not for instance like some series which I have read recently *cough, cough, "Need"*, which seem to be on a down-world spiral). 

All in all, this book has had major hype surrounding it (especially with all of the giveaways that Beth has been having on her giveaway- seriously hundreds of prizes, which for some gosh darn reason I cannot even win a bookmark... *Shakes fist at the giveaway gods*) and do I think that the book does live up to its hype (despite quite a few so-so reviews in the blogosphere world). I am personally extremely happy with it (and that's not just because I am a fan of science-fiction) and I must say that I think that it is hands-down one of the most unique books I have ever read before.  

Rating: 10/10