It's not hard for me to fall in love with a book. So when I saw everyone raving about Across the Universe I fully expected to be immediately taken in by it too. I wasn't, but that's ok, this was still a worthwhile read for me, one that possessed qualities I liked and ones that I didn't like as much.
The beginning of the novel starts off wonderfully. The scenes from Amy's perspective while she was still frozen were truly haunting. It was chilling to read about Amy going in and out of dreams with no sense of time; no real idea as to whether she was truly living or dead.
Another thing that was fantastic in this novel was the world building and plot. A space ship off on a mission to a newly discovered habitable planet, with cryogenically frozen people from Earth on board, and generations of people breeding and running the ship! That is one of the most original plots I've come across in the YA genre in a long time [Fake Spoiler Alert: There wasn't one vampire on board! *That I knew of.*]. I loved every aspect of life aboard the ship and even found the season to be interesting, even if it was a little revolting. Also I liked that the "mental" people are the ones with deeper feelings... I think we see that a lot on Earth already! I felt like I could imagine the ship clearly, normally I find it hard to imagine something so foreign to my brain, so props to Beth Revis for that! I didn't see the end coming and I thought the plot flowed nicely and reached a satisfying climax.
The things I didn't like about the novel involved Elder and Amy. I didn't buy their romance. It was a little bit too much like "instant love" to me which is something I easily grow tired of in a novel. Besides, I could only hear about Amy's "sunset hair" so many times before wanting to throw up. That's enough, I get it Elder, I think red heads are awesome too. I understand that he'd never seen anything like her before but I think because of this his feelings didn't feel real to me. I felt like Elder didn't receive a lot of characterization otherwise. Honestly, I found myself rooting for Harley and Amy to get together. Harley was actually my favorite character on board the ship. Another thing that irritated me was Amy's penchant for calling her father "daddy" and absolutely nothing else. In the beginning of the novel I thought I had been wrong about her age because I felt like I was reading the narrative of a five year old. Later I counted her using the word "daddy" thirteen times in the span of two pages [pages 234 & 235 if you're curious]. These were actually my only real dislikes in the entire book but it was enough to distance me from Amy and Elder both; especially since I didn't really care for them as a romantic unit.
All of that being said I will definitely be reading the second novel in the series when it releases. I am eager to see where the story goes next (I've got several theories!) and my only hope for the next novel is that Amy's use of the word "daddy" decreases and the relationship between her and Elder is fleshed out a bit more.
Rating: 3/5
