My Thoughts: This book is one I’ve been waiting for since I first heard about it. When I went to ALA Annual this year I was on a mission to get this book, and let me tell you, boy am I glad I got my hands on a copy. Vengeance Road is the first Western book I have ever read. Sure, I have seen True Grit and a bunch of other movies and television shows, but I have never sat down and actually read a Western till now. And now that I have, I can’t even think of how to explain how glad I am that I did. Not only is this the first Western book I have read, I think it is one of the first Young Adult books of its kind – though, Walk On Earth a Stranger is coming out during the same month. Vengeance Road was raw, that is the best way to describe it. It was real, there was no sugar-coating or cutting corners – it was raw, real, and absolutely terrifying in ways I never would have thought of before reading this book. From the very start Vengeance Road encapsulated what a wonderful writer Erin Bowman is. This book is filled to the brim with hard-hitting issues. There is murder, slavery, the fanatic fever of the gold rush, all sorts of things I can’t even begin to label. Vengeance Road tore my heart into little itty-bitty pieces while simultaneously making me laugh, smile, rip my hair out, and scream. We start off with our protagonist, Kate, returning home to find a group men hanging her father from a tree …show more content…
The plot was exciting, suspenseful, and no dull moments. There are numerous twists and turns that I never saw coming. Vengeance Road is a truly engrossing read that shows some vivid history of America and how the greed and lust for gold created beasts of men. It was one of my most anticipated reads of this year and it surpassed all expectations. If there’s any book that you read this September, let it be this one, it will not