Spoilers!
The best way I can describe what I just read is to pull out a cliché: an absolute trainwreck that I couldn’t look away from. Then, somehow, the pieces of the trainwreck fall in love at the end. Penelope Douglas’ 2020 book, Credence, is most certainly the winner of “dirtiest book” I’ve read this year. And by dirt, I mean smut.
Tiernan is on the cusp of 18 when her parents commit suicide together. Her mother is a rich and famous film actress and her father is a rich and famous writer. What they share in common is inattention and neglect of Tiernan. Thankfully, her mother’s assistant, Mirai, has always been there to be a de facto mother to Tiernan and give her some semblance of a life. After their death, her legal guardian is her father’s stepbrother, Jake, who lives in the deep, snowy mountains of Colorado with his 20-something sons, Kaleb and Noah. Kaleb is a functional mute ever since his mother left him in the car alone for four days at the age of four. She’s been in prison ever since. Tiernan decides to go live with them since there’s nothing left for her in California, much to Mirai’s chagrin and worry.
It becomes obvious early on that, despite Jake being her uncle — step relationship to her dad or not, he’s still her uncle! — and Kaleb and Noah being her cousins, everyone is feeling lusty for everyone else. Yes, to be emphatic about it, Jake, too, despite Tiernan still being 17 and him in his mid-40s. All three men are characterized as animals, Kaleb the most so since he doesn’t talk. They grunt and growl. Demand things of Tiernan. Order her around. Treat her like she is another extension of their property. And in a smutty twist on Game of Thrones, we keep getting hints that when winter comes and they’re all snowed in together, the men won’t be able to help themselves and will surely have their way with Tiernan. I resent the sentiment that men are sex fiends who can’t control themselves around their niece and cousin (or any woman!), even when snowed in. Nonetheless.
Tiernan, for her part, is quiet and reserved. She’s not used to being around people or in a “home” or as it’s grossly mentioned numerous times (even after the lust becomes obvious), having a “family.” She quickly grows up, as it were, and finds her voice and her attitude.
At one point, Kaleb and Noah turn the television to a porn movie and start masturbating in front of Tiernan. A line has clearly been crossed. Then, just as it looks like a threesome might happen — between cousins and two brothers, mind you — Jake interrupts, sending the boys away. He then proceeds to lustily spank Tiernan. Not long after, he ends her virginity in his truck. Three times, then two more times later back at the house. Five times in one day! This is going to be a reoccuring theme, but I’m always amazed that women write these stories. I guess it’s fantasy for a reason. Add in repeated references of how “tight” Tiernan is, or calling her “princess,” or just in general, how the men totally dominant her, and again, I suppose that’s the fantasy of it (or at least with the “tight” part imagining that’s what men think anyway). Yes, it’s slipped in a few times that Tiernan wants and is choosing what’s happening to her, but that doesn’t negate how she’s being treated. In fact, the first actual sexual encounter occurred when Kaleb came out of the wilderness and sexually assaulted Tiernan before Noah intervenes, reminding him who she is. Because he’s an animal who can’t control himself, remember? They play this for jokes later that Tiernan wanted it, but well, I’m not even going to touch that.
Despite Jake knowing it’s wrong, he has more sex with Tiernan. Then, when Jake leaves to go to a nearby cabin, the aforementioned almost-threesome between Tiernan, Noah, and Jake does occur, and it’s easily the smuttiest smut I’ve read in a book not just this year but likely ever. But after that point, Tiernan seems to choose Kaleb as the one she’s going to love. She had this whole spiel she gave to the men that derived from the one good bit of advice her mother gave her: first you lust with someone, then you learn with someone, and then you love with someone (typically three different people). If we’re applying that to this, uh, family, Tiernan lusted with Jake, learned with Noah (and Kaleb), and now is going to love Kaleb. Tiernan adds a fourth “l” to the list: listen since Kaleb doesn’t talk. If you ask me, all of this is deranged, grief-filled lust. As I wrote in my review of Want by Gillian Anderson, I am not a kink shamer or someone to yuck someone’s yum. But I don’t see how you can read what transpired among Tiernan, Jake, Noah, and Kaleb without thinking she was taken advantage of and harmed to some degree. Yes, we’re supposed to believe she doesn’t care about her parents’ death because they were awful, but that only makes the “taking advantage of” more likely, not less.
While all of this is going on, Tiernan is rather dismissive and negligent of the one person who has always been there for her: Mirai. More on Mirai in a moment.
There are some other elements that occur to mix up the sex scenes, like the brothers being into the bike racing scene (the family business is fixing bikes) and the trouble they have with one of the local bikers (he tries to burn the barn down to steal their bikes), or Tiernan taking up various hobbies and obtaining skill sets fit for living in the mountains, but for the most part, it’s about the sex and then when not having the sex, worrying about jealousy among the men, and later, if Kaleb loves her or not. Why won’t he talk? Why won’t he say it? That sort of thing.
Credence, the namesake of the book, is mentioned in a few different ways as to what that entails. The first mention is that everything that’s happening in Colorado gives credence to the fact that Tiernan has always needed a home. Kaleb literally has the word credence tattooed on his body, although I can’t remember if it’s explained why. At some point, credence is mentioned again as to all of this, again, being what Tiernan needed to find herself and find love and belonging. Finding a family and home, yes. Finding romantic love among her family, not so much.
In the end, Tiernan returns to California with Mirai and moves back in to her parent’s house. Tiernan actually tells Mirai everything that happened. So, for example, Mirai knows that a 40-something year old, who is Tiernan’s uncle, took her virginity. All three men follow Tiernan to California because as they repeatedly say, she’s “ours” and “family.” Kaleb surprises Tiernan by speaking for the first time in more than 17 years. Douglas moves the story in time five years, where Tiernan and Kaleb are still together, back in Colorado, and with a child. Oh, and who is together now, too? Jake and Mirai. I rolled my eyes so damn hard. Yuck. I did not want that for Mirai. She wouldn’t do that! The whole scene is painted as this loving familial situation: Jake has someone he loves since he’s been alone for so long to raise the boys himself; Noah is the successful biker, finally getting out from under his father’s shadow and he’s a doting uncle to Tiernan and Kaleb’s boy, too; and Tiernan and Kaleb are happy together, Tiernan having still done what she wanted to do outside of Colorado and Kaleb is persistently talking. But they all had sexual relations with each other! It’s not a rosy picture! There is no bow you can put on this to make me forget about that. Ah!
Finally, I thought it was amusing that out of everything that happened in the book, toward the end, I wondered why Douglas didn’t wrap up the missing panties story. Yes. About midway through the book or so, Tiernan realizes her panties are missing and she goes searching for them throughout the house and in Noah, Jake, and Kaleb’s respective bedrooms. She doesn’t find them. We learn nothing more about them. As it turns out, as promised on the cover, there is a bonus scene where Douglas addresses what happened. Kaleb took them because he took ownership of Tiernan and didn’t want her sleeping with Jake or Noah. That’s basically it (and yes, they also have kitchen sex).
My sister-in-law gifted me this book for Christmas since she’s more accustomed to reading smut books to give me a shot at it. I knew what I was getting into because of that and also because of Douglas’ trigger warning at the start, including, among other things, misogynistic behavior, power imbalance, sexual violence, dubious consent, and sexual harassment. All of that flows from, at various points in the book, Jake, Noah, and Kaleb toward Tiernan. But those three are presented as the good guys. Grrr.
In all seriousness (ha), I rolled my eyes at the sexual descriptions throughout, the character descriptions of the men and their behavior, and obviously, was frustrated during the book, particularly and mostly, by the treatment of Mirai. But as I said at the top, it was also a trainwreck I couldn’t look away from. It could have been 200 pages shorter, for sure, but I kept reading for all 536 pages (when counting the bonus pages). That’s saying something. Heck, I didn’t even intend to write 1,700 words about this book, but I did. That’s also saying something. I couldn’t look away from what was going on in those dang mountains. I don’t think I could read a smut book like this on a regular basis the way others surely do (and obviously, seem to enjoy doing so), but every now and then, if I need a trainwreck, I know who to turn to.
Milam's Musings 