Review: Becoming by Raine Thomas (Daughters of Saraqael #1)

Title: Becoming

Author: Raine Thomas
Publication date: July 29th 2011
Age group: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Cover rating: 5/5
Content rating: 4.5/5
Buy: Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble

Description:

Every three years, Amber Hopkins explodes. Okay, not a blown-to-smithereens explosion, but whatever it is always hurts like hell and leaves her life a shambles. She’s already worked her way through five foster placements, and she’s doing whatever she can to avoid getting blasted into a sixth. 

As her eighteenth birthday approaches and she feels the strange and powerful energy building, disaster looms. When the inevitable explosion occurs, her life gets its biggest shakeup yet. She’ll not only learn how her fellow foster and best friend, Gabriel, really feels about her, but she’ll discover that she isn’t really without family. 

To top it all off, she’ll finally find out why she’s having the power surges: she isn’t entirely human. 

Amber must Become, transitioning to another plane of existence and risking the loss of the most important relationship she’s ever had. Her choice will impact the future of an entire race of beings, and will pit her against an enemy that will prey upon her doubt to try and take her very life.
Kind of makes the explosions now seem like a cakewalk.

My thoughts:
Becoming is one of those books that you sit down to read a few pages of and next thing you know, you're looking up at the clock and an hour has somehow passed you by! I honestly adored this book from start to finish and my only regret is that I didn't read it sooner. Becoming first caught my eye a while back because of its lovely cover. Once I read the description, I knew this was a book that I could not miss out on. Power surges? Alternate planes? I just had to know how it was all going to play out.

I loved pretty much everything about this book. From page one, the reader is thrown into an absolutely fascinating story. We get to know the two protagonists, Amber and Gabriel and see the close but complex friendship they have. Amber hasn't had an easy life; all her foster placements didn't end well through no fault of her own, but this doesn't stop Amber from being a kindhearted and selfless character who you can't help but adore.

There is certainly a lot of tension from the very beginning of this book. Amber and Gabriel are constantly living in fear of Amber having one of her ''surges'' and the possible consequences of that. Amber never really gets to relax and just enjoy her life because she never knows what's ahead of her or how dangerous it is! When Amber and Gabriel find out that there are others like her out there, they are quite willing to believe it because they had already seen the impossible happen several times.

My favourite part was when we found out about the Estilorians and their story. It was just so intriguing and I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page. I love how Amber found out so many secrets about her own past and faced it with courage and a level-head! Gabriel and Amber are really forced to grow up pretty fast in this book but their relationship is sweet, even if it all gets a bit cheesy at times!

I also really loved the characters names in this book. They were just fun to look at and added a unique aspect to this book! If you haven't already figured it out, I thoroughly enjoyed Becoming and will be getting to the rest of the series in the coming weeks so look out for those review. I'll also be reviewing Defy next week for the blog tour, which is based on the same world but is a separate series! 

Click HERE to add this book to your Goodreads shelves!