I've loved Sarah McCarty's books since I first started reading her Promise series long ago. I admit, I prefer that series to her Hell's Eight series, but Hell's Eight is fun to read too.
Of the six books that have been written for the series so far, I rank Caden's Vow at #3. (My favorites are Caine's Reckoning and Tracker's Sin.) Maddie O'Hare makes a great female lead in the story. She survived unspeakable horrors which devastated the core of who she was, but she didn't allow her past to destroy her future. She found the strength and determination within her to heal, and to make a life for herself with or without the man she loved.
Maddie is a character who was introduced earlier in the series, as one of the women rescued by Hell's Eight from forced prostitution. Parts of this story strongly reminded me of my favorite Catherine Anderson book, Comanche Magic. It's hard to live up to a story like that once the comparison has been drawn, but Ms McCarty did a wonderful job of making Maddie's story unique, one full of hope and strength. What I like best about this story is that Maddie doesn't wait for someone else to bring happiness and stability to her life. She decides to step up, take a chance, and find a way to thrive in the world on her own. She does so with great dignity, intelligence, and a lot of savvy.
Caden Miller, surely like many men of his time, was not at all ready to see the frail woman he knew begin to transform into a woman who was strong and confident about what she wanted from life, not to mention one who found resourceful ways to protect herself when necessity demanded it. As good men often do though, he managed to grow and learn from the lessons that love sought to teach him, and so he too found that his past did not need to dictate the path of his future.
