Friday Reads: Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman!!!

Hello there guys!!

Happy Friday!! This is the first review that I'm writing at my new apartment, since I've finally moved!
I still have a lot of work to do, sorting things and moving all the book boxes, and getting more furniture... but I'm now living in my apartment!

For this week's Friday Reads I have up for review one of the ARCs that I got from BEA and one that made me really want to read more westerns!!



Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I liked Erin's dystopian trilogy and was extremely intrigued by this YA Western, even if I'm not a big westerns reader, and it was in my priorities list for BEA, thank you so much HMH Books!

Vengeance Road is written in dialect from Kate's POV first person and I was a lil worried at first wondering if it'd might keep me from getting fully into the book, but I worried in vain, after chapter 4 I was used to the dialect and Kate's voice and it actually made the book feel more authentic, more real.

Kate is a very complex character, dealing in the grey area of the ethical spectrum. She is driven by vengeance first and foremost and she seems to be remorseless in her pursue of the killers of her father, even some innocents might suffer in the process. But as the story unfolds, there is so much more to Kate and how she decides to face the world, she grows so much! And she really is a cactus type of character, prickly but with a treasure inside!

Vengeance Road could be called a roadtrip book, if going after a band of bandits on horseback disguised/dressed as a boy can count as a roadtrip! The plot seems quite straight forward at first, Kate goes after her father's assassins, but soon things get more complicated when she is joined (quite against her wishes) by a pair of brothers that want to protect & help the "son" of a friend of their father. And then with the killing and the hiding and running and being hunter and hunted... With a few quite unexpected twists, well, is very hard to put this one down, you just want to keep turning pages to see who will survive!

But where I feel like I must give the biggest props to Erin Bowman, at least for me, is in the descriptions and ambiance she manages to write for this book. You simply feel like you are there, with the sun hitting your back, sweating and almost feeling the gritty sand in your mouth! The atmosphere is fantastic and full of tension and you can tell that the author has done her research, because you really feel like you are THERE!

The secondary characters were also very well fleshed out and even the bad guys were not just cartoony bad guys. And with Liluye we have a completely different culture, outlook and experience that Kate learns to respect and even try and understand.

I loved how the romance played, for the most part it was rather slow burn and muted, because it was never part of Kate's plan and it was at first a very unwanted distraction, but I was very happy to see how it all played out, how in the end Kate made sure her life was not defined by anyone or anything else but herself and at the same time didn't close herself to love and hope!

This is my absolute favourite Erin Bowman book to date and I highly would recommend it to anyone that wants something different, wants to give westerns a try and anyone that appreciates great characters! Very well deserved 4.5 to 5 stars to this one!



View all my reviews

Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman: Mini preview review and PREORDER CONTEST!!

Hey there guys!!

Happy Friday! And happy start of the long 4th of July weekend to those of you in the US! Also happy belated Canada Day to all my Canuck friends!

Today I am going to share my love for one of my BEA books that will come out in September with a mini preview review, since it's still a lil early and also spread the word on the preorder contest that is going on for said book!

Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman was one of those books that I knew I needed to get from BEA this year, and even though I'm not sure if they had any drops or anything, me and my BEA crew got our ARCs by the very simple method of going to the HMH Books booth and ask about it!

As the mood reader that I am I really couldn't wait till a closer time to release date to read Vengeance Road (but at least it's not as bad as already having read Truthwitch, that comes out in Jan... I know, I know!!) and since I had like well enough Erin's Taken trilogy ( I still need to read the final book though, soon!) I was pretty excited to read this one!

Vengeance Road truly blew me away! I loved it from beginning to end! It took me a lil while to get used to Kate's dialect (and the general way everyone speaks in the book) but after the first 4 chapters I was so immersed in the book and the story, it just felt natural to me!

I'm not the biggest western lover or expert but I've watched my fair share of John Wayne movies with my dad and enough episodes of Bonanza on weekend mornings to not be a complete newbie, BUT, I don't think I've really read a western book before, unless you count the 3 Rin-Tin-Tin ones that my brother had?

Vengeance Road was both atmospheric and had a very visual setting, you could almost feel the scorching heat and the dust in your eyes! I loved how Erin did use a real legend and added some historical characters into the story as a base for Kate's story. I loved how the pace was quite fast and a lot happened in the book but never to the point of being overwhelming or confusing, and I love how we got some seriously unexpected plot twists here and there!

Kate is quite a cactus character (I love that metaphor that Amber Argyle created on her Summer Queen book and plan to continue to use it!) very prickly and for a while she had me a bit worried about her lack of remorse, but I love how by the end of the book she was both stronger and softer than she was in the beginning.

There are two boys, but no love triangle, unexpected allies and a band of bandits that hide more than one ace on their sleeves, a quest for Vengeance and gold and redemption and quite a few shocks and deaths and a wonderful slow burn romance and a heroine that doesn't know the meaning of giving up!

Not only I gave Vengeance Road 5 stars but I also have it preordered already! And I MUST INSIST that you all go and preorder this one! If you liked Erin's previous books you must get this one and if you weren't too keen on them... I insist even more!!

And if you need a lil bit of a push to preorder the book already... Erin Bowman has a fantastic contest going on in her website. You get an awesome swag pack just by preordering the book, and then you enter a contest to win even more awesome stuff! For more details, click HERE!!