Title: Credence
Author: Penelope Douglas
Release Date: January 14, 2020
★★★★
** Kindle Unlimited
Tiernan de Haas doesn’t care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she’s grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. Shipped off to boarding schools from an early age, it was still impossible to escape the loneliness and carve out a life of her own. The shadow of her parents’ fame followed her everywhere.
And when they suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But has anything really changed? She’s always been alone, hasn’t she?
Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan who is still two months shy of eighteen. Sent to live with him and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, in the mountains of Colorado, Tiernan soon learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore. As the three of them take her under their wing, teach her to work and survive in the remote woods far away from the rest of the world, she slowly finds her place among them.
And as a part of them.
She also realizes that lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.
One of them has her.
The other one wants her.
But he... He’s going to keep her.
So, how do you review a book like Credence by Penelope Douglas? That is the question.
Here's the thing. I absolutely devoured and enjoyed this book - as I tend to with pretty much everything that Penelope Douglas writes - but as soon as I put it down, I literally said out loud, "What the hell did I just read?" This is not a book that everyone will enjoy. In fact, I think that this is a book for a very specific type of reader and will be very, very polarizing in general. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers as much as I can for this review, but be warned that for the purposes of really examining what worked for me and what didn't in this book, I feel like I can't be entirely vague.
Something that always brings me back to Penelope Douglas books is that the write that she creates characters really makes them feel human. Now, sometimes that means that they're not the most likable or relatable characters, but I always feel like their motivations and struggles and demons make sense to me and it feels like I'm reading a story about people - which is an absolute must for me to really enjoy a book. For me, Tiernan wasn't necessarily a character that I liked outright, but she was a character that made sense to me, felt real, and ultimately made for a protagonist whose story I was interested in. I liked that she felt her age, she felt like the result of her experiences, and over the course of her arc her actions and feelings really felt authentic. For me, it really can't be downplayed how important this is, especially considering how uncommon this actually feels in this genre of books these days.
As I write this, it's actually been about a week and half since I read the book and I've really been sitting with and getting my thoughts in order so I can write this review, and I have one really persistent thought as I write this. This isn't a romance novel. I mean, I get that a huge number of people will probably disagree with me, probably even including the author, but just bear with me for a second. Saying that this isn't a romance novel isn't an indictment of it at all, and doesn't take away from my enjoyment of it or make it a bad book, I just feel like there were some things that were missing that would bring it all the way to romance for me.
If you asked me to describe this book, at least the first maybe 70% of it, I would say that it's erotic sexual awakening coming-of-age story and I think that's what I really loved about it. For me, the parts that I find myself being unsure now are that last 30 or so percent where we see the development of the relationship between Tiernan and the man she ends up with as well as a bit of a twirly mustache villain situation that really didn't add anything to the story for me. Ultimately, it ends up feeling a little bit forced to me and loses some of the magic of the rest of the book where we see Tiernan really coming out of her shell, gaining confidence, and figuring out herself, what she wants, and what she deserves emotionally.
I think that as I really digest and think about this book, I'm left with a feeling that... as much as I enjoyed the reading experience - and I really, really did - I'm a little bit let down with how it ended. I don't actually have a problem with who she picked in the end, of the three men in the book I think he was the very obvious choice, I would have felt more connected to the ending if we had seen more of that relationship development through the book. It's difficult kind of because I think that the rest of the arc made perfect sense and developed really, really well, but in the end I think it probably needed another 100 pages of romantic development between Tiernan and the man she ended up with to really connect me to that relationship.
Also, in retrospect, I don't like Jake. There's something about him as a character and how the book ends that just makes me super uncomfortable in the brain region when it comes to him and I actually find myself actively ignoring his entire character. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't say that. And it's weird because... clearly Kaleb is kind of terrifying for a lot of the book, but holy cow I just vehemently don't like Jake. And Noah is a puppy.
(I feel like I sound super disjointed, but that's kind of how my thoughts are on this book in the end....)
I initially rated this 4 stars and I'm going to stick with that even after I've really digested it and settled into how I feel about it. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience, it was really, really well written for the most part, and my love for Penelope Douglas is in no danger of going away. There are definitely things that I wish had been different and I don't by any stretch think it's a perfect book, even subjectively, but I really enjoyed reading it.
Like I said, this is gonna be polarizing, so I would really think about your personal preferences if you're thinking about picking this up.
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