Book Review: Credence by Penelope Douglas

I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I’ve been in a reading funk lately, so I decided to try a new-to-me author.

I will preface this by saying I went into this one knowing nothing about the story, only that it was “dirty” (at least according to what I saw on social media). When someone mentioned that it was the filthiest book they’d ever read, I was excited—I do love me some filthy romance.

The naughty rating… 

Although it does rate “filthy” on my rating scale based on the overwhelming amount of graphic sexual scenes, it is middle-of-the-road for me. The creativity of the encounters is mild to medium. Don’t get me wrong; it is definitely hot, but there is a LOT of sex. As for the naughty level, I opted for filthy due to the taboo elements and the frequency of the encounters. 

And the tropes… 

Something to note: this is mentioned to be a reverse harem, but this is not a “why choose?” storyline, which I was glad for simply because it pertains to a man and his two sons with one teenage girl.

This book ticks off a number of erotic tropes—forced proximity, age gap, multiple partners, pseudo-incest, etc.—since the story is about a teenage girl (she’s 17 at the start of the book) who loses her parents and ends up having to live with her “uncle” and his two sons until she turns 18. There is no blood relation, and they don’t know each other. The author clarifies this several times at the start of the book.

There’s a forced proximity element that plays into it because they are trapped on a mountain in Colorado for—it’s something like six months every year because of the weather—and everyone knows the best way to pass the time when it’s cold outside is to have sex.