Tiernan is sent to live with her late mother's stepbrother and his two sons in the Colorado mountains after her parents die. Isolated. Grief-stricken. Watched by three men who have their own complicated history. Credence is peak Penelope Douglas — dark, atmospheric, controversial, and compulsively readable.
Scorching — this is explicit dark romance with multiple love interests and no fade-to-black.
Skip if you dislike:
Moods: Dark Forbidden Atmospheric Isolated
Tropes: Forbidden Romance Isolation Reverse Harem Adjacent Taboo
Yes — one of Penelope Douglas's darkest books with explicit content and morally complex situations.
Yes, multiple love interests and romantic situations with more than one man.
Yes, standalone.
Every Sort By Cravings guide is written after a full read-through — not scraped from publisher blurbs or Amazon summaries. We map tropes directly from the text, cross-reference BookTok and Goodreads reader reactions across 500+ community posts, and calibrate heat ratings against reader consensus before publishing. Mood tags, spice numbers, and “skip if” notes reflect actual reading experience. Read our editorial standards.
