So much language

Also, I would have liked this better if the girl-disguised trope lasted more than like two days.

2 stars
( )

My opinion of this one didn't start to change til the last 75 pages; then it turned from well-written but shallow to something more interesting and harder to put down. Still. This is one of those books that takes all the tropes and has a nice long satisfying wallow in them, but doesn't transcend them in any way. Good cover art and a few tropes I enjoy get this book a ways, but there's a limit.

Expecting the author to think about what it means to be a settler on stolen land was definitely expecting too much. (Except where convenient to the plot, of course.) I don't really know enough to comment, but it didn't sit right with me. ( )

3.5 stars
I enjoyed this but in some parts of this book I wanted a bit more out of it. I definitely enjoyed the second half way more than the first. I had a hard time getting into it at first, but I am glad I stuck with it. I did really enjoy the characters and setting of the book. I thought the characters all had very realistic and very interesting character traits and personalities. I didn't love the romance that developed between the characters so much. For me, it was just missing a bit of something that made me really care about it. Kate's father dies on the first or second page of this book and then the rest of the book is a journey for revenge, but I just didn't care enough about the father to care if Kate got justice for him or not. There were also some other characters deaths or plot twists that, while I didn't really see them coming, They also didn't have much of an impact on me. Also, a lot of side characters that came into the story later, especially Liluye, as well as Evelyn, that I just wanted to know more about, to me, they were some of the most interesting characters, maybe even more interesting than the main characters in my mind, but we really never got to learn that much about them. So much was hinted about them regarding their lives and backstory and relationships but we never got to learn more. I did think this book wrapped up nicely and I was pretty satisfied with the ending, besides the loose ends with the side characters that I just mentioned. Overall this was a very pleasant read but sometimes I just wanted more out of it. ( )

Suspenseful, fast-paced, and so very atmospheric, the dirt and the dust, the speech patterns, I felt thoroughly pulled in to this western world.

Kate, dressed as a boy, saddles up and makes it her mission to hunt down and kill the men who hung her father.

Kate’s arc progressed fantastically, full of fury and grief, gradually healing without ever losing her fire.

The characters riding alongside Kate were memorable, too. Jesse and Will’s backstory informed their actions, so even when I didn’t agree with something they said or did, I at least understood why, plus I liked Jesse’s vulnerability, I liked that oftentimes he seemed more fragile than Kate, which isn’t exactly commonplace in depictions of gender.

I loved Liluye, an Apache girl attempting to make her way home, I know it’s unlikely to happen but she really deserves a book all her own. I loved that she’s so true to her convictions and insistent on respect, and how sharp and observant she is, she has such a good read on everyone, intelligence is one of my favorite things in a character and she has that in abundance.

While there is a romance in Vengeance Road, I liked that it’s mostly a quiet presence throughout and in the moments when it does become more prominent their dire circumstances aren’t forgotten.

The story could have easily wrapped up earlier than it did and I very much appreciated that the author instead took some time to let things settle, it made for an emotionally satisfying ending. ( )

Edelweiss provided me with an ARC. I'll definitely recommend this to any of our teens who like stories with tough girl main characters or westerns. It's really well written, and the story is compelling. Written in dialect, it reminds me of True Grit. However, I didn't love the portrayal of the Apache and Liluye in particular, as it feels very VERY stereotypical and plays on a number of tired tropes. It could have been worse, but it also could have been better, and with so few depictions of Native American characters in YA lit to begin with, it would have been nice for this one to be better than it was. ( )