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
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 BowmanMy 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
