Hey adventurer! This is my first book blog post, and although I’m excited about writing it, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about the book itself. Spoiler alert: I am not a fan of Credence. I also spoil the ending, so proceed with caution.
Before I begin, I’d like to mention that this is my personal opinion. If you like this book, there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe readers enjoying different books simply proves how unique and different we all are and that’s amazing.
Credence has a long list of trigger warnings, which I encourage you to read before starting the book.
The setup
The story follows Tiernan, who loses her parents at the start of the book. Since she’s still only 17, she needs to live with an adult. Enter Jake, her father’s stepbrother. He contacts Tiernan, and she moves to his remote cabin in the mountains, in a town called Credence. Jake has two sons. Winter plays a significant role in this book because during the winter, no one can leave this cabin. Let’s just say that at the very beginning of the book, Jake asked Tiernan not to call him “uncle.”
I knew the tropes in this book wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but I might have been okay with it if we hadn’t been hit with such a huge dump of trauma that the MC had suffered throughout her life, right from the first few pages. I felt so bad for Tiernan throughout the whole book. That girl needed therapy so badly. Honestly, everyone in that book needed therapy. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Two tropes that are not for me
- The age gap
- Very dubious consent
The age gap
One of the issues I was aware of before I started reading: a significant age gap. And not the kind where the MC is 30 and their partner is 50, no, we have a 17-year-old girl at the start of the book and a 37-year-old man. Huge age gaps, especially before characters have developed their prefrontal cortex, are a big ick for me. A huge ick. This book just took it to the next level.
The dubious consent
Issue number two: in my opinion, this book had very dubious consent. It’s not the first book I’ve read with such a trope, but I’ve never read a scene where the MC was still strongly against it, if that makes sense. There is no open communication or discussion before any of the scenes occur. In my humble opinion, all the interactions between Tiernan and Kaleb were so awful that I could not believe he was the endgame.
Back to the age gap. Luckily, Jake’s sons were okay(ish) in comparison to their dad when it came to the age gap, though they had their own share of issues. Noah was ultimately the most mentally stable of the brothers. Still, of course the author had to write a story where the other brother, Kaleb, was just a lost soul who assaulted (yes, remember the very dubious consent) our MC multiple times because he was simply such a tortured guy and “in love,” he just didn’t know it yet.
And then, the ending. The book has a HEA, if you can believe it. All I can say is: family dinners are surely going to be fun for all of them for the rest of their lives.