Namera [The Literary Invertebrate]'s Reviews > Credence

** spoiler alert ** What the actual HELL did I just read????

Girl's parents commit suicide. Girl is placed under care of her father's stepbrother, who lives in the mountains of Colorado with his two sons. Girl spends winter hopping from one of their beds to the other, before 'falling in love' with the one who's a psycho.

HERE'S WHY NONE OF THIS WORKED FOR ME:

❌ The relationships were not handled well AT ALL. The girl (Tiernan) has sex with her step-uncle Jake first, then step-cousin Noah, then other step-cousin Kaleb. It's just... well, it's hard to describe, but the moment she's finished having sex with Jake or Noah, all the lust that the author has spent ages building up fizzles out of her. It's really weird. But then at random moments, the lust comes back. I just don't understand it, but I can't really explain. Just take my word for it that the relationship dynamics are handled badly and illogically.

❌ Kaleb is a goddamned psychopath. Just trust me on this, as someone who usually loves psychopathic heroes (I gave 5 stars to The Silver Devil and I like Addison Cain, for f*ck's sake) he leaves them in the dust. He doesn't speak because of a 'childhood trauma', he does nothing but rape the heroine until she's convinced she likes it, and finally throws her birth control pills into the bin. If the author balanced this by showing us moments where he CARED about the heroine, I could have possibly tolerated it; I have a high threshold for dark heroes. But he doesn't give a crap about the heroine. HE SPITS ON HER, he slaps her, he throws food at her... Bloody hell.

❌ The 'love' in this book is a joke. Simply, the heroine has sex with three men, and then arbitrarily decides to fall in love with one of them over the other. That's it. There's no deeper reason. They never speak to each other, Kaleb isn't even in like half the book, he rapes her like it's going out of fashion... even when we get a chapter from his perspective, it's evident he feels nothing for the heroine besides a vague physical interest in her. THERE IS ZERO BASIS for their love and this book is not a romance.

❌ I have to say, I can't blame the heroine too much, because Tiernan is clearly suffering from intense mental disturbances and she honestly just needs professional help. It's not her fault - her parents never paid any attention to her. So of course, suddenly three attractive men are displaying interest in her, and she mistakes the Stockholm-esque nature of her feelings for Kaleb for love.

❌ This book is MISOGYNISTIC AS F*CK. It's all about every male in the book having an endless supply of slutty women while they pull a shotgun on a guy flirting with the heroine (whom obviously, the author makes into a baddie. So there isn't even any real option for the heroine). Tiernan thinks about telling the men how hypocritical they are, then sort of just forgets all about it. I wanted to reach into this book and strangle every male character in it.

❌ There's a plot-line about Kaleb possibly getting an OW pregnant. As if this dumpster fire of a book wasn't bad enough.

Think I'm going to stop there, but I've read and disliked Penelope Douglas's heroes before so I really should never have put myself through this torture. Stay the hell away.

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