Credence by Penelope Douglas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
From New York Times bestselling author Penelope Douglas comes a new standalone…
Tiernan de Haas doesn’t care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she’s grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. Shipped off to boarding schools from an early age, it was still impossible to escape the loneliness and carve out a life of her own. The shadow of her parents’ fame followed her everywhere.
.
And when they suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But has anything really changed? She’s always been alone, hasn’t she?
.
Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan who is still two months shy of eighteen. Sent to live with him and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, in the mountains of Colorado, Tiernan soon learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore. As the three of them take her under their wing, teach her to work and survive in the remote woods far away from the rest of the world, she slowly finds her place among them.
.
And as a part of them.
.
She also realizes that lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.
.
One of them has her.
.
The other one wants her.
.
But he…
He’s going to keep her.
Credence
Re-read via audiobook!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Romance: 💙💚🖤💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙📔
World building: 🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍
Character development: 😳🤬😮🤨🥰
The heroine: Tiernan – from Beverly Hills and is the daughter of two famous people who just died. Her parents loved each other so much that they didn’t have room in their world for anyone else, including their daughter.
The Heroes: Jake – Jake is the estranged step-brother of Tiernan’s father. He lives in the mountains with his two adult sons. He is 6’2” and athletic, he is in his early 40’s and at least 10 years younger than her father was. He and his two sons customize dirt bikes, ATV’s and dune buggies by special order. They get a bunch of orders in the fall and ship them in the spring.
Noah – friendly and affable, though he doesn’t get along with his father and doesn’t want to be there.
Kaleb – likes to spend long periods of time in the wilderness hunting. He hasn’t spoken since he was four years old.
The Story: Tiernan grew up alone with nannies until she was old enough for boarding schools and and during school breaks she was sent to summer camps. Her parents died a week before she was to return to boarding school and just ten weeks before her eighteenth birthday.
Tiernan wants to get away from the spotlight of her parents deaths and she finds out that her fathers estranged stepbrother, Jake has become her guardian. Tiernan wants quiet alone time so she decides to go live with him and his two sons in the Rocky Mountains. I liked Tiernan a lot from the very start. She was obviously very neglected and lonely, but had more or less come to terms with the fact that her parents didn’t care.
Though Tiernan reflected on the fact that she did the Hollywood glamour stuff like shopping, fashion, makeup, to try to get her mothers approved. Tiernan is very quiet at first, rarely talking and when she does it is with as few words as possible. She goes to the mountains for a place where she can breathe and have some space.
Tiernan finds that Jake and his two adult sons, Noah and Kaleb, live on a up on a mountain and the road closes every year once the snow comes. So they are cut off from the nearest town for six months out of the year, which is fine with her since she just wants to be alone. However Jake and Noel don’t let Tiernan cut herself off from them.
There are a few small things I didn’t like about the book, but I won’t go into them because that would be giving things away. Despite those small things I really enjoyed this book. I loved the relationship between Tiernan and each of the guys. She had a different type of relationship with each of them which she really needed and they become a family.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a nice little family drama story. It is off the charts hot and steamy. The characters are completely awesome, each in their own way. I would pay cash money to be snowed in for six months with those three guys. So would most of the girls in the nearest town!
The book was told in multiple points of view, though the majority was told from Tiernan’s, and the narration was done by Sofia Willingham, Greg Tremblay, Carson Beck, and Michael Pauley. Sofia Willingham has a soft voice which is a bit sullen sounding which worked well for Tiernan who just lost her parents and has been lonely most of her life. I love when there are narrators for each of the main characters so that sold me on getting the audiobook, aside from the fact that I loved this book the first time around.
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