Credence by Penelope Douglas: A Book Review

I want to be clear upfront: I did not enjoy this book. More than that, I found significant portions of it deeply problematic.

If you are a fan of Credence, good for you. This book has a devoted and passionate readership. But this is an honest review, and honestly, I did not like this book.

Synopsis

Credence is a standalone dark romance novel by Penelope Douglas, first published in 2020. Tiernan de Haas is seventeen, almost eighteen years old, when her parents die suddenly, leaving her in the care of Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, at his remote property in the mountains of Colorado. Living there with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan is isolated from the rest of the world as winter comes. As the book describes it, lines blur, and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.

It is a New York Times bestselling title and one of Penelope Douglas’s most discussed and most controversial works.

My review

Credence is one of the most controversial books in the dark romance genre, and that controversy is warranted. There is a vocal readership that considers it a masterpiece of dark, transgressive fiction: raw, honest, and unflinching about desire and trauma.

Respectfully, I do not agree.

Let me start with what is true: the Colorado mountain setting is vivid and well-rendered. Douglas writes isolation and physical landscape with real atmosphere. And I understand, in theory, what she’s trying to do: explore desire in spaces where conventional morality doesn’t apply, give readers a safe container for transgressive feelings. I am not opposed to dark fiction as a genre.

But Credence crossed lines.

Tiernan arrives at Jake’s property traumatised, grieving, and seventeen. She is a few weeks shy of adulthood (a mere technicality of a date) when she is placed under the guardianship of a man who will go on to pursue her sexually. His sons follow suit. Jake is old enough to know better and to stop himself. He does neither. I found his lack of restraint and care towards his traumatised niece not romantic but pathetic.

Kaleb, whose romantic arc is presented as the emotional heart of the book, attempts to rape Tiernan on three separate occasions. He physically and emotionally assaults her throughout. He makes her feel worthless for most of the novel. By page 460, Tiernan is musing that it seems nice, the idea of building a family with him: he’s almost twenty-two and seems ready for a child (WTF). This is the same person she also describes as a boy, while simultaneously concluding he is ready to have children. At this stage, she is eighteen and has been in a relationship with him for a matter of weeks.

Noah, Kaleb’s brother, is less violent but watches everything happen without intervening, and pursues Tiernan himself the moment she is an adult (again, only just 18). None of the three men appears to have any meaningful concern about the fact that Tiernan is their cousin (not by blood, but by guardianship), which is a serious line that the book treats as essentially irrelevant.

However, Tiernan is not a straightforward victim in all of this, which I think Douglas intends as complexity. She bed-hops between the men without apparent regard for how that affects the dynamic among people who are trapped together for months. She is rude and dismissive to almost everyone, including Mirai, a woman who has cared for her throughout her life, who continues to call, offer help, and provide a safe alternative, and whom Tiernan ignores, lies to, and fails to defend when Jake is openly rude to her. When Mirai finally offers Tiernan a place to live and escape, Tiernan chooses to stay with the men who have assaulted and manipulated her, declaring that she is not a child. The irony of that statement, given every decision she makes in this book, is considerable.

I should also note: the level of sexual content made me uncomfortable. Not because it was graphic in isolation, but because the context was familial, because so much of the physical dynamic was wrapped in coercion and assault, and because there was so much of it relative to the weight of genuine feeling between the characters. I actively did not want any of them near each other. That discomfort was significant enough that I nearly DNF’d the book on more than one occasion.

I would have liked a book with these dynamics, in which Tiernan was not sexually active with anyone. Perhaps there was tension and desire, but the boundaries couldn’t be crossed, and it sowed division through the group, creating violence and an explosive end. Now, that’s a book!

Credence has defenders who argue that it is deliberately uncomfortable, that the transgression is the point, and that dark romance is meant to unsettle. But I think there is a meaningful difference between fiction that explores dark desires with craft and intentionality, and fiction that frames assault and coercion as steps on the road to love without fully reckoning with what that means.

Flowers in the Attic covers similarly transgressive family territory and is, I would argue, a more remarkable book precisely because it does not ask you to find the romance. It asks you to sit with the horror.

What I liked / what I didn’t

What I liked:

The setting. The Colorado mountain isolation is atmospheric and well-realised, and Douglas clearly understands how physical environment shapes behaviour and psychology.

What I didn’t:

Almost everything else. The framing of assault as romance. The complete sidelining of Mirai as the one genuinely caring adult in Tiernan’s life. The lack of any meaningful consequence for any of the men’s behaviour. Tiernan’s repeated insistence that she is not a child while making decisions of startling immaturity. The uncle/cousin dynamic treated as a non-issue. The sexual content in the context of ongoing coercion and assault.

Final verdict

Credence has a significant and devoted following, and I want to acknowledge that before I close. Readers who love this book love it deeply, and dark romance as a genre serves a real purpose for many people. But I found this book offensive in its framing, troubling in its consequences — or rather, its lack of them — and unconvincing as a love story. One star. I would not recommend it.

If you are drawn to the transgressive family dynamics at the centre of this story, I would direct you instead to Flowers in the Attic. It will unsettle you more effectively, and it will not ask you to mistake what it is depicting for romance.

Where can I read it?