Vengeance Road

by Erin Bowman

3.5 stars

I could have loved this book, I really could. I'm a huge fan of TRUE GRIT and stories about pioneers in the wild west. And there is a lot to praise here. There really isn't anything else in YA fiction like VENGEANCE ROAD except maybe the superiorly written NOT A DROP TO DRINK by Mindy McGinnis. I loved the TRUE GRIT premise of a girl seeking to avenge her murdered father, and I'm a sucker for girls pretending to be boys and inadvertently discovering romance. I also enjoyed the way the legend of The Lost Dutchman mine was woven into the story with plenty of historically accurate details. There are, however, a few drawbacks as well.

The dialect came just shy of working for me (it did initially, but ultimately came across more like the Doris Day version of Calamity Jane--just a little too hokey for my taste). I also had some trouble with the more modernized view of sex in the book (not that there is anything close to graphic in the book). It could have been lifted from an current YA book. The first half of the book is also stronger than the second, which gets a little twisty and unnecessarily complicated. And ultimately, I didn't end up buying into this old west world and characters as deeply as I had hoped.

VENGEANCE ROAD is still a fun read and definitely distinct from anything else you're likely to spot in the YA section of a book store. There is plenty of violence and bloodshed in keeping with the dangerous time and place the story is set in, but also more than one modern view that doesn't fit as well.

The author has stated that she is considering the idea of a companion novel, "but it would supplement VENGEANCE ROAD (story with new characters and conflicts) rather than be a direct sequel."