Kate Thompson seeks revenge at any cost after her father is killed by a gang of robbers who believe he had information about a mythical gold mine. Disguised as a boy, Kate quickly tracks a wounded gang member into town, where she interrogates him, confirms he is part of the notoriously vicious Rose Riders gang who now have her father's gold mine maps, and summarily executes him. She then heads toward the nearby town of Wickenburg looking for Abe, the man her father always told her to find if he died. Though Abe turns out to have died years earlier, his sons were told to adopt any Thompson that ever arrives looking for him. Jesse and Will ask the still-disguised Kate to stay on their ranch, but she's too focused on tracking the Rose Riders to take them up on their offer. Because they're struggling financially, the brothers agree to accompany her in exchange for any gold that they discover. The journey immediately seems doomed due to Kate's blinding rage, which luckily is no obstacle to love, as a predictable romance develops between Kate and Jesse, once he discovers she's a girl. And the predictability continues as clichd Wild West characters pop in and out of the story so frequently that even their deaths leave little emotional impact. The novel starts with a bang in an interesting setting, but it quickly fizzles into melodrama. (Historical romance. 12-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the spirit of Portis's True Grit, this compelling novel is set in the rough-riding Wild West. Eighteen-year-old Kate pursues the Rose Riders gang to avenge her father's murder and retrieve his journal, which contains maps to a gold mine. Kate is a fiercely determined protagonist in a historical adventure that features cold-blooded killing, lawlessness, lively characters, and a touch of romantic intrigue. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In her latest novel, Bowman departs from science fiction to pay homage to Charles Portis' classic western True Grit. Eighteen-year-old Arizonan Kate Thompson arrives home to find her father hanging from a tree and their home burnt to the ground. An only child raised by her father after her Mexican mother died, Kate disguises herself as a boy and sets out to discover who killed her father and why. In the process, she meets the rakish Jesse Colton, becomes aware of racism against Indians, and battles the vicious Waylon Rose. Kate's spunky, stubborn, and resourceful character is refreshingly believable. Though she is waylaid by ignorance and inexperience, it's her admirable responses to those failures that make her stand out in the field of feisty female protagonists. Readers will be entranced by Bowman's swiftly paced, romantic revenge drama, and historical fiction fans will relish the period clothing, western dialect, and details of everyday life. With plot twists galore and a nice surprise at the end, it's a page-turner, albeit a derivative one.--Carton, Debbie Copyright 2015 Booklist

Gr 8 Up-After finding her father hanging dead from a tree and her home on fire, Kate sets out, disguised as a boy, to pursue the Rose Riders, the ruthless band of murderers and thieves who killed him. A nod to Charles Portis's True Grit (S. & S, 1968), this YA Western portrays the moral ambiguities that arise in the single-minded pursuit of revenge. Bowman's Gold Rush Arizona resembles nothing so much as a postapocalyptic Zombie-infested wasteland: Children are burned alive in coaches, whores and whisky abound, and Kate shoots good and bad men alike when necessity demands. The protagonist narrates her story in the same dialect as she speaks, a rough, pared-down chronicle of a world uncivilized. She distrusts even her few companions, Jesse and Will Colton, a pair of brothers in search of gold, and Liluye, an Apache girl who reluctantly agrees to guide them through the mountains. A series of tests along the way blur moral lines beyond recognition, especially as Kate begins to develop feelings for Jesse. Readers who won't flinch from a vivid portrait of a lawless world may appreciate her ruminations on the horrors she encounters and the choices she has made. By confronting such realities head-on, the book demands the same stoicism from its readers as the heroine herself possesses. VERDICT Teens sick of books that coddle them will enjoy sinking their teeth into Bowman's latest, a work for readers looking to graduate from L.A. Meyer's "Bloody Jack" series (HMH).-Anna Stover, Poughkeepsie Day School, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In a tale set in 1877 and inspired by the legend of the Lost Dutchman, Kate Thompson sets out on a quest for revenge after her father is strung up by outlaws; disguised as a man, she gets caught up in two brothers' hunt for gold in the Superstition Mountains of the Arizona Territory. Bowman (the Taken series) crafts an unflinchingly bloody tale of the Wild West, with flesh-and-bone characters she doesn't hesitate to obliterate with a bullet. Each plot twist-and there are many-is purposeful, driving Kate toward her goal while allowing her to grow, alternately showing a steely nerve and a compassionate side. In Jesse, Kate finds a perfect foil, and their friendship, marred by lies and betrayal, is the stuff of reality rather than folk legend. Kate's narration, peppered with phrases like "I says" and "it weren't," is initially jarring, but the driving force of her story quickly vanquishes any stumbling over her diction. Kate's pursuit of the murderous Rose Riders, intertwined with gold-rush greed driving men to madness, makes for a thoroughly engrossing read. Ages 14-up. Agent: Sara Crowe, Harvey Klinger. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.