Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Becoming (Daughters of Saraquel, book one)
by Raine Thomas

Summary (From Raine Thomas' website) :


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.

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What can I say? This book is just amazing. It got me smiling the moment I read the 1st few chapters. I am such a sucker for cheesy love stories, for the love that leaps through a parallel world and for a  love that is bounded by trust.

This book focuses on the eldest daughter of Saraquel, Amber. Then the next books would be for the succeeding daughters. But in  this book, the other 2 were also introduced. Which brings me to the narrative mode that the author used is the third-person view. Honestly, it is a little confusing jumping from describing one from the other. May be I'm just not used to the 3rd person POV.

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The best scene for me was when Amber and Gabriel exchanged promise rings! GOSH! When I was reading this book I was in total high! I kept giggling on all of the sweet scenes between Amber and Gabriel. I do not know about other girls, but I think it would be amazing to have someone special that you can have a connection with like they have.

The Estilorian:
Well, the author made a whole new civilization with different classifications. These classes have different jobs and can be distinguished by the color of their wings and eyes. I will not discuss the different classifications and their jobs. There is a whole page for them explained by the author herself in her website that can be found here if you are interested. The people living there or should I say Estilorians description are more on angelic like. They have wings, they fly, they have different powers and they look young even if they tend to live forever.

Another thing I liked in the story is how beings that are living in Estilorian do not have strong emotions. Who are the most fit to teach them but the 3 young girls that are half-Estilorian and half-human? I have watched and read too many anime and manga that this kind-off story line is not new for me. But it still grabs my attention from time to time that half-something and half-human are always significant.

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I noticed that in GoodReads there aren't many ratings regarding this book. It is such a nice book. I highly recommend you to read it. I am looking forward in reading the next two books which would be my goal for the weekend and will try to write a review about them. I am giving this a 4 out of 5 stars that I will most likely read it again in the future.

Quite interesting is that this author is publishing independently. I give my salute!

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