A review by chelseaj91
The Becoming by Jeanne C. Stein

3.0

2.5 Stars!!

Anna Strong is a bounty hunter—tough, confident, at the top of her game. But when she is attacked one night in a parking lot, her life is inexorably changed. She awakens in the hospital to find she has become a vampire and her world is now the unsettling world of the undead. With her mentor, the vampire doctor who treats her, she strives to make sense of it all. But then her home is burned to the ground, and her best friend is kidnapped. Anna suddenly finds herself alone on a quest to save not only her friend, but herself as well...

I read this book several years ago and while I still enjoyed it, I don't remember a)having as much trouble getting into it and b)getting as annoyed with the book as I did.

I liked Anna, don't get me wrong. She was tough and even with all the new stuff thrown at her, she held her own. I also liked the fact that despite Avery's insistence that she let go of her mortal attachments, she never fully bought into that line.

I hated the line of "you realized you were a participant and not a victim". Whether or not her body responded to what happened with Donaldson, she was still a victim! She was attacked and raped and she WAS A VICTIM. She might have been tough and strong and everything, but that doesn't change anything. Just because her body responded to the attack and the vampire lust stuff, doesn't mean she was a willing participant.

Avery got my guard up from the beginning. He was a little too willing, and a little too helpful. And I really hated how he kept trying to push Anna to give up all her old attachments. Yes, as a vampire and an immortal being who was going to be around for a long time, she might have wanted to consider starting to let things go eventually. But, not only should she have been allowed to do it in her own time, there were also several members of Avery's group that had human/mortal attachments, so why was it so important that she suddenly give up everything?

I did feel like a couple of the characters were just...there. Like Max was there and the reason he wasn't around all the time was explained really well, but Anna kind of, well, not necessarily forgot, but he definitely seemed to slip her mind a lot more as things were moving forward. And why in the world was Michael even mentioned if he was never going to make an appearance? There was definitely some backstory to who he was but at the same time, it felt like she could have chosen literally anyone else to be her supposed ride home.