The new trend in books is the dystopian and new world novels — “The Hunger Games,” “Delirium,” and “Divergent” all have movie or television deals. Following this trend is “Across the Universe” by Beth Revis.

Amy and her parents choose to leave Earth behind and became frozen in tanks on a spaceship named Godspeed. They are scheduled to wake up 300 years in the future on a new planet. Sounds pretty cool huh? Well, someone wakes her up 50 years before she was supposed to with plans to kill her. She soon finds out that her parents are the next target.

She has to learn how to live in a world — confined to a spaceship — that’s unlike anything she’s ever experienced. She is in a race against time to find out what exactly Godspeed is hiding, but doesn’t expect to fall in love in the process.

This book is split up into the views of Amy (the heroine) and Elder (her love interest). Sometimes the division bugs me, but Revis did it right. Amy and Elder both have secrets of their own to figure out, as well as their feelings for each other. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a book about romance. The romance is the main aspect that’s not fully developed. Revis saves that for the next books in the series.

The plot of this book is original. Many dystopian novels play off each other. It’s either the end of the world, another race took over or wars on wars on wars. Rarely do authors take the risk of creating an entire new planet. Even though the reader doesn’t get to see the new plant in the first novel, the society on Godspeed is straight up cray. There’s all kind of social unrest, people getting raped and class orders.

At the beginning of the book, there is a lyric from the Beatles song “Across the Universe,” which leads me to believe that this book was loosely based on the song. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I can see the connections between the lyrics and the characters. Eldest, the guy who runs the ship, has the frame of mind that “nothings gonna change my world.”

Revis is a beautiful writer, which compliments the lyrics from the song. “Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they are never real. They’re never real, and I hate them because they aren’t.”

This book was written in a way that all audiences can enjoy it. Old, young, boys and girls. I give it three and three quarters stars.