Title: Credence
Author: Penelope Douglas
Genre: Romance
Edition/Pages: Ebook, 485 pages
Goodreads page

Summary

Tiernan just lost both of her parents and while she knows she should be grieving, she feels nothing at all. So when her estranged step uncle calls and offers a her a place to stay, she agrees to move in with him and his 2 sons. In the isolated mountains of Colorado, Teirnan learns about family and support. But once the snow hits, the lines start to blur.

“One of them has her.
The other one wants her.
But he…
He’s going to keep her.”

Overview

➸ POV: 1st Person, Multi POV – mostly from Tiernan’s POV but some chapters from Noah and Jake

➸ Content Warnings: Neglect, Suicide, Abuse, Bullying, Graphic sexual content, Dubious consent

My Thoughts

I want to start off by saying this book will not be for everyoneso please take my 5 star rating and review with a grain of salt. Also, be aware that this book covers some extremely heavy topics such as abuse and child neglect and toes the line on consent, bullying, and taboo content. This is a very, very sexually explicit romance between an 18 year old woman and her step uncle and 2 step cousins and was hands down the most erotic book I’ve ever read. So tread carefully before diving into this one.

It’s hard to talk about my feelings on this book without getting into mild spoilers. I don’t go into significant detail however.

This book blew me away without amount of emotions I had while reading. This starts off tragically with the main character, Teirnan losing her emotionally absent parents to suicide. Watching Teirnan struggle with expressing herself after years of neglect was absolutely heartbreaking. Then about 40% into the book, Teirnan has a huge breakthrough emotionally and this book makes a 180 turn from heartfelt to downright filthy.

There is a scene at the 50% that had my erotica loving self blushing like a fool. Have your holy water ready, you will need it after this scene. I bow to Penelope Douglas for writing the absolute steamiest scene in all of romance as of today. From there, things only get more wild – PD does not shy away from the explicit or the taboo.

I absolutely loved Noah. He was my favorite of the male MCs and I’m really excited that we will be getting more of his character! Penelope Douglas has made it very clear that this is a standalone novel, but that we will be getting more of Noah’s character. So obviously I’m now on a mission to read the entire Fall Away series asap!

Despite calling who Teirnan was going to have the HEA with, I still shipped her and Jake the most. There relationship felt the most magnetic to me and I just really loved their chemistry and connection.

I also appreciated that while these character grew a lot during their time snowed in together, the biggest leaps were made when they went out on their own. These characters weren’t healed by another person, they went out and worked on themselves.

I do wish we had gotten more from Kelab! He was just a caveman for the majority of this and he felt slightly underdeveloped in comparison to the other characters. And I agree with other reviewers that the final couple twists were a little ridiculous and unnecessary. But they weren’t enough to keep me from absolutely loving this story.

Overall this book was so far out there and absolutely nothing like what I want a IRL romance to be. But it made for a completely engrossing read that I never wanted to put down! And when I did put it down, it was all I could think about. This book was an absolute rollercoaster of emotions and I honestly have no idea if my thoughts are coherent despite finishing this a week ago. I am now on a mission to catch up with all of PD’s open series so that I can read absolutely everything she releases after this.

Also, please read the Acknowledgements if your pick this one up! Penelope Douglas shares her motivations for writing this book and taking it that places she did.

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