Credence
Penelope Douglas, 2020
Romance PoetryContemporary fiction
After her parents die, a guarded teenager is sent to a remote mountain house ruled by her father’s estranged stepbrother and his sons, where solitude sharpens into obsession. The story moves with a slow, intense pace, blending sharp satirical observations with moments of deep, aching tenderness.
Feels like dread and tenderness. About death and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy dark, psychological romance and stories focused on intense emotional transformation. However, the story maintains a heavy, bleak atmosphere that focuses on themes of death.
Why read it
Read it to experience the slow, inevitable burn of a guarded person finding unexpected connection in isolation.
A page from the book
When old neglect finds a fresh place to hurt.
I lock my jaw, swallowing the needles in my throat. Over all the years of nannies and boarding schools and summer camps where I was kept busy and raised by anyone but them, I’d found little pain in anything my parents did anymore. But it seems there are still parts of me to hurt. Penelope Douglas.Credence is a standalone novel, not part of Douglas’s Fall Away or Devil’s Night series.
Books that feel like this
More by Penelope Douglas
Corrupt
Penelope Douglas, 2015
A girl leaves the money and protection she has always known for a city where the one person who scares her already lives.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Credence for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy dark, psychological romance and stories focused on intense emotional transformation. However, the story maintains a heavy, bleak atmosphere that focuses on themes of death.
- What is Credence like?
- The story moves with a slow, intense pace, blending sharp satirical observations with moments of deep, aching tenderness. Feels like dread and tenderness. About death and love.
- What should I read after Credence?
- If you liked Credence, try The Pact (Jodi Picoult), An Ember in the Ashes (Sabaa Tahir) and Verity (Colleen Hoover).
A taste of the feed
The problem with wanting everything to stay exactly as it is.
He began to trace a pattern on the table with the nail of his thumb. "She kept saying she wanted to keep things exactly the way they were, and that she wished she could stop everything from changing. She got really nervous, like, talking about the future. She once told me that she could see herself now, and she could also see the kind of life she wanted to have - kids, husband, suburbs, you know - but she couldn’t figure out how to get from point A to point B.
The Pact · Jodi Picoult
The difference between guilt that crushes you and guilt that steers you.
There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you.
An Ember in the Ashes · Sabaa Tahir
Some people keep a darker world on hand so the real one stays bearable.
I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.
Verity · Colleen Hoover
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed