What a goddamn RIDE. Penelope Douglas writes bully romances and the "bad boy" archetype so well that it literally has me debating my morality after each book I read of hers LOL. My brain literally can't comprehend what I just read, and I feel the need to take several showers and rinse my eyes with holy water but I'll do my best to sum up my thoughts:

"Spicy" doesn't even begin to express this book. This is hands down the dirtiest book I've ever read. If my review was based on smut alone it would've been an easy five star read - Penelope Douglas knows how to write a love scene! However, where she lost me was the plot. It wasn't bad by any means, but I also wasn't very invested and guessed who our main character Tiernan was going to end up with pretty early on, so my level of intrigue wasn't as high as it could've been. It also didn't help that I didn't feel much chemistry outside of the palpable lust between Tiernan and who she ended up choosing.

My biggest issue I had with this story was how it handled the topic of consent. We got Tiernan's internal dialogue and we clearly knew that she desired a sexual relationship with each of the men at one point or another, but my issue with the consent specifically had to do with (view spoiler). She specifically was saying no while actively pushing him away and he kept going anyway, until she eventually "liked" it. It was gross and very triggering, but like I said there was so much gray area because her internal dialogue was clearly showing that she wanted to be intimate with him.

That being said, this book is not for the faint of heart, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want to pick up more of her novels.

To be honest, I was disappointed by this book. It was really hyped up by booktok, but then didn't deliver on its promise. #1 offense: not actually reverse harem in my opinion. Just a FMC with multiple partners, who is brutally shamed for that fact by 2 out of 3 of them. There were some moments where the shaming was so over the top, and the FMC just accepted it, that I felt like this book was more of a way for the author to express their internalized slut-shaming more than anything else. 

The female MC ends up with the man who nearly rapes her TWICE, hits her across the face for being "hysterical" while getting stitches in a kitchen with no pain meds or anesthetic, and attacts and spits in her face when she sleeps with someone other than him, in addition to many other things. In my opinion, that speaks volumes to how this author views her female characters.

Only reason it isn't getting a 1 is because the quality of writing was good overall, despite what the plot lacked. And it delivered on the spice, though more of a slow burn than advertised. 

Ratings:

Plot:⭐⭐⭐ /5 

Writing:⭐⭐⭐⭐ /5

Characters:⭐⭐⭐⭐ /5

Romance:⭐⭐⭐⭐ /5

Diversity:⭐ /5

Overall:⭐⭐⭐⭐ /5

Sadness:💧 /5

Spice:🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ /5
Tropes & kinks: Age gap's, BDSM elements (spanking and bondage), threesome, forced proximity and found family. 

Credence by Penelope Douglas follows Tiernan De Haas, the only child of a famous film producer and his scarlet wife. When her parents suddenly pass Tiernan is sent to live with Jake Van der Berg, her father's stepbrother and only living relative and his two sons Noah and Kaleb who she has never met before in their isolated cabin in the mountains of Colorado. When the three of them take her under their wing and teach her how to survive on her own, Tiernan starts to find her place among them and begins to build something that she's never truly had… a family. 

This book is a dark romance and does deal with some triggering and taboo topics so please look into trigger warnings before reading it. I have the trigger warnings at the bottom of my review.

Ever since I started reading smutty romance I had heard about Penelope Douglas books everywhere so I decided to pick Credence up and I ended up thoroughly enjoying this book. 

One of the best aspects of this book is Penelope Douglas writing, it's very immersive and addicting. It really makes you feel like you are in the mountains of Colorado. Honestly I kinda wish I had read this book while camping because it would have made it that much better. The one problem with her writing that I have is the fact that she uses the word dive way too often and now everytime I see that work in her books I'm filled with an insane amount of rage. Seriously i've counted it, she uses the word dive 33 times!! That is a lot!! 

This book took me about a month to read due to the fact that this book is dark and it was hard to read a lot of it at one time. There's also not a lot is happening throughout and there was nothing that really makes you have to keep reading but it also wasn't boring at any points because there was no points where I was bored while reading this book but when a chapter would end it was easy to put it down and say you would read more later. 

The characters in this book are definitely going through some crap! As I was reading this book I would tab anytime I would think to myself "wow they need therapy" and as you probably guessed there was a lot, 24 to be exact and I actually kept count of how many times I tabed something for which character. Noah had 3, Tiernan had 5, Jake had 7, and coming in with a total of 13 tabs is kalab. Even though these characters definitely need therapy I did absolutely love them and loved seeing their character grow and get better especially Kalab.

The romance in this story is definitely taboo but I absolutely ate it up. I absolutely loved seeing Tiernan's relationships with Jake, Noah, and Kalab evolve into what they are in the end of the book. I loved seeing her create a family with them and seeing them all grow together. 

I know a lot of people don't like who she ends up with and I can see why they would prefer her with Jake or Noah because her relationship with them did seem more throughout and developed and I honestly feel like if we had gotten to see kalabs point of view throughout the whole book it would have developed their relationship a little bit more. So I completely understand why people didn't like her ending up with Kalab but I personally absolutely love her and Kalab together and I had even gone through and highlighted every thing Kalab had done throughout the book to show that he cared about her. 

I loved them being together because they are both similar people, they had both gone through trauma that had caused them to pull away from people and Tiernan was someone who Kalab could connect with without talking and he didn't need to talk for her to understand him. She also was someone who didn't push him to talk and was fine with just sitting there and not talking due to the fact that she didn't like talking either. She understood him. 

Also I do not agree with any of the things Kalab did to her in this book. 

This book is definitely a taboo book and is not meant for everybody so go into this book with that in mind and please if you don't like this book don't hate on people that do.