Bringing YA to You!

Below is information from Beth Revis's blog on YA2U, a fun contest that 5 best-selling YA authors created where readers can vote for what town / city they think these 5 authors should tour/ visit. I'm excited about this contest and my vote totally goes to BOSTON! *shameless plugin of my city* Wherever you are, vote for your city and these fabulous authors just might come around your neighborhoods. :)

CLICK HERE TO VOTE >>

Contest information from Beth's blog:
“ Bringing YA to You (or YA2U for short) was a project that came from YOU--all of you who have ever said, "Why won't a book tour make a stop in my hometown?" Well, that's what we want to do! We're hosting a contest--everyone gets to put in whatever city they most want us to go to, and whatever town has the most votes, will get an exclusive tour stop from all five of us!

And that's not all--we're also hosting another contest where, if you help us spread the word, we'll give you ten signed books, all the books we've published so far--including all three of my own books!

Authors that will be featured in these tours

In short, you could win a tour stop in your hometown from five award-winning and best-selling YA authors or ten signed books direct from the authors! Sounds fun, yes? :)

You can find the full details of the YA2U project here: http://ya2u.blogspot.com and you can also go ahead and enter your hometown for the win and help spread the word. There's also lots of cool features on the site, including downloadable posters (consider putting them up in your school or library! More votes = a better chance for you to win!) and other tips on how to win.

I can't help but think I'm forgetting something...oh yeah! The other authors! I did mention there were five of us, right? Five amazing, wonderful, best-selling and award-winning and splenderiferous authors, right? RIGHT?

For more info, go to the contests' site:

Bringing YA to You!

Across The Universe Review

Release Date: January 11, 2011
Publisher: Razorbill
Author: Beth Revis

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

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.

My thoughts:

Across the Universe manages to blend sci-fi and dystopian together beautifully. The first chapter of Across the Universe was one of the strongest I’ve read this year. I admit that after the first chapter of the story it bacame a  bit slow and I had to put it down for awhile, but when the story started to pick up in pace I couldn’t put it down a second time.

The setting of ATU is in a spaceship called Godspeed where there are people who have been traveling for hundreds of years, there desination being a  new planet NASA identifies as habitable. Everyone on the ship is mono-ethnic. Most of the people on the ship lack any real emotions, and the few that do have emotions are labeled as crazy.

For the most part I really enjoyed Across the Universe. The premise was interesting and the plot unfolded pretty nicely. I mean, how awful would it be to end up stuck on a ship your whole entire life stuck on a ship where you know you'll never see the sun or the moon or the ocean ever again. I loved the characters! I liked how the book swtiched from Amy's perspective to Elder's. The only setback I had was that I felt like the book wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be after reading the amazing first chapter. Not to say that the rest of the book wasn’t good, just that it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Overall:

 If you haven't already you can order Across the Universe here on Amazon.

Across The Universe Review

Happy Book Birthday~!

Happy book birthday Across The Universe! I can't wait to read you! :)

Here's the summary:

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.


*Anyone else looking forward to reading this as much as I am? I can't get to the bookstore fast enough.

Happy Book Birthday~!