Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Credence

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

haunted_hexes's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Credence … What can I even write here? I picked this book up because I had seen it all over TikTok, I went in blind, I didn’t even listen/watch/read reviews.

Here we go …

Did I read this book in 24 hours, Yes. Did I tuck what little morals I have in a tiny hidden box … Yes. Would I read this again, Yes definitely. It’s hard to describe what I felt while reading this book because I always thought growing up I was a certain type of person … but oh boy was I wrong. While reading this I had that nagging feeling of … is this morally right? But ….

it was clearly stated they were not BLOOD related, just through marriage. Plus none of them had even grown up with her … so in fact they were strangers to each other.
It still kinda gave me the ick though… and it wasn’t even the age that did it to me, maybe because I’m from the uk and the age of consent here is 16 and it has been for a very long time and it’s just the norm here? I don’t know… but I still found myself getting drawn into it all and wanting her to sleep with them all. I’m a bad person … eh, I’m already going to hell might as well go out doing it right 👀

The only thing I wished was different about this book is more of a storyline between Kaleb, I wanted more desire and fight between them all it’s like they got snowed in and all that promise of tension and desire … flopped a little for me and don’t get me started on jake … what the hell happened it’s like he was gonna be end game …. Went off towards the fishing cabin came back after the fire and that’s it, it was like he flatlined.

But this book was definitely an amazing first read for this author for me, it’s not for the faint hearted definitely got that shock value. I’m definitely recommending it to friends!

Content Warnings