I have never felt compelled to leave a review for a book until now. I was nervous to read this book after seeing such mixed reviews about its content. I recently discovered Penelope Douglas and made quick work of both Punk 57 (which I liked) and Birthday Girl (which I loved). Credence was definitely not an easy read due to the heavy topics and taboo relationships, but I couldn’t put this book down!! It was emotional and dark and intense and quite honestly one of the most heartfelt and genuine romances I’ve ever read. This story provides an emotionally raw visual of loving fiercely and unapologetically.

I would not recommend someone read this without reading the content warnings first!

Content Warnings

clareasday's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

bookameme's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Anti-Romance

Quote:📖

“In a few months, the snow will melt, and the world will invade us again, but right now . . . they’re mine. For this one winter, they’re mine.”

Thoughts: 💡
Sometimes I wish P Douglas wasn’t such an entertaining writer. This book sucks you in and keeps you rapidly turning the pages completely engrossed in the story. The problem is that she doesn’t seem to use sensitivity readers. She writes about a few topics that she’s clearly unknowledgeable about and creates very problematic scenarios. I’m certain that this book would rate much higher and be enjoyed by a wider audience if she makes a few revisions.
The characters are all struggling and have intense issues that they really should seek therapy for, instead they just hole up on a mountain and yell at each other. They do end up finding solas and a way to live, and create a very entertaining story. I wish we would have seen more character development, instead what we got were dark themes and crazy hot smut. The bonus chapter found at the end of the paperback gives you a look into Khalib’s struggles and thoughts. I loved that it finally gave insight into a marginalized character and their struggles. If you’re a dark romance reader I’m certain you will enjoy this one, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t like darker themes.
As for the audio, I liked that there were four different narrators. The audio quality was a solid 4, as well as the three male narrators. However, I think the female narrator was spectacular and would love to head more from her.

Fun Bits:
⚜️ Super Smutty
⚜️ Lots of Angst
⚜️ An Interesting Plot
⚜️ Some Suspense

Important Note:✨
This book was rereleased by Berkley and the paperback has bonus content that the eBook doesn’t have.

Full Content Warning:⚠️
misogynistic behavior, power imbalance, group sex, sexual violence, dubious consent, suicide, child neglect, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and bondage

Stats:📊
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
💙💙💙💙
Audio: 🎧🎧🎧🎧
Narrators: 🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️
Dark Erotica: Taboo, Love Triangle, Coming of Age, Age Gap, Grief & Loss, Hurt/Comfort, Found Family
First Person, Present Tense, Multi POV
⚠️: misogynistic, power imbalance, group 🍆💦, 🍆💦 violence & harassment, dub con, self unaliving, neglect, & domestic 🤕

Content Warnings

nicolaj1994's review

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

rosamaria's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I hated everything about this book, yet I still read all 470 pages.

Content Warnings

avery_29's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

kamilamalves's review against another edition

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can't even remember if that's the percentage i was at, i just rage quit and deleted it. one of the brothers tried to

fucking rape

the girl WHO IS SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD and not only do the characters act and try to convince her that it's normal but the author makes the girl say

"oh but for a moment there i wanted it"

fuck that, fuck this book, and fuck this author for ever writing this. this is completely irresponsible and it's baffling to me that this book is in the "romance" category. and what i mentioned isn't even the start of it. yes, "uncle jake", it is fucked up of you to think of and picture your 17 year old niece (putting a "step-" before that doesn't make her less your responsability)

fucking someone

when you were supposed to take care of her after her fucked up parents both commited suicide. what's wrong with people who read this shit and even recommend it?

Content Warnings

_fallinglight_'s review

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dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

My 69th read of 2023 and none of these hoes even bothered to do 69. Lame. Easily one the most deplorable books I've read, ever. Like this would've made an interesting book if this had been about Tiernan getting to know what it would be like to be a part of a family and everything was familial love and shit and not that Tiernan is gonna know the true meaning of family through fucking and Jake and co. weren't such weirdos. But at the same time, Tiernan's parents are so comically, exaggeratedly neglectful and emotionally abusive I can't take it seriously. Also this book has one of the worst things in fiction: the "money isn't everything" bullshit. That shit is more painful to read than an ovarian torsion pain. I think books where rich people are sad and pitiful are the worst. I like it when they're absolutely unhinged and messy lol.

Anyway, I hated that this book used an attempted sexual assault to titillate. I just don't find that hot, it was weird, and worse how Tiernan throughout this story wants to ease Kaleb's culpability and share half the blame to idk give her like control and give it nuance??? And even worse worse when it happens right after Tiernan was raped by Kaleb and then it horrifyingly segues into a sob story of Kaleb's childhood trauma and we have to like feel bad for this serial rapist and forget what he did to Tiernan??? Hello???

The writing in this is terrible; the way every complication was conveniently resolved by Jake or Noah knowing information that would absolve Kaleb of any would be wrongdoing, like if he's a baby daddy (HIPAA? we don't know her) or how also conveniently Kaleb turned out being a diarist and therefore all character development was lazily shown through that. The characterizations were even worse, just all-around levels of dross. (Jake disappears out of the story in a haphazardly done way though who cares bc he SUCKED. And Noah, who is the most normal one out of these clowns but the bar is in hell so, was just a doormat and spokesperson for the man-child nontalking troglodyte. He deserved better. Actually getting away from this horrendous family.)

I'm not too close minded and I don't moral outrage easily so the step-family incest angle of this did nothing to me and I could've overlooked it but the out of nowhere "romance", "love" with a sexual abuser and all the steps Penelope Douglas took to make it cute just enraged me. But then again, there are other awful sins this book makes like sexualizing pigtails (!!) and Penelope Douglas thinking having the attention of an ambiguous 40 year old when you're 17 is hot. Idk about anyone else but at 17 I DID NOT want some 40-something year olds sexual attention and now at 33 I don't want to feel 17 again thinking how nice it'd be to have some 40-something year olds advances. And there's sprinkled homophobic prison rape jokes, for good measure.

I enjoy smut but nothing written here was even good bc the characters were fecal matter awful and just everything that preceded it throughout the story was a nightmare. The ableism and sexism towards Tiernan, for example. This Jake dude wants her to "smile more" and be his little ray of sunshine and her maybe neurodivergence is weaponized against her but his animalistic son who doesn't WANT to communicate is ok? Yeah yeah. At some random point it's shown that Jake wanted to teach Kaleb ASL and whatnot but it was only to conveniently explain what a gesture Kaleb made before disappearing again meant. In conclusion, this is a mediocre and stupid and bad book. Save yourself and don't read it. Don't let curiosity kill the cat like I did.

Content Warnings

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