Creed by Trisha Leaver

Creed by Trisha Leaver & Lindsay Currie
Series: No
Publisher: Flux
Publication Date: November 1st 2014
Source: Publisher [Netgalley]

Three went in. Three came out. None even a shadow of who they once were.

When their car breaks down, Dee, her boyfriend Luke, and his brother Mike walk through a winter storm to take refuge in a nearby town called Purity Springs. When they arrive, the emergency sirens are blaring and the small farming town seems abandoned. With no other shelter, they spend the night in an empty house.

But they soon discover that not everything in Purity Springs is as it seems. When the town's inhabitants suddenly appear the next morning, Dee, Luke, and Mike find themselves at the mercy of the charismatic leader, Elijah Hawkins, who plans to make Dee his new wife. Elijah's son, Joseph, offers to help them escape... but the price of his help may be more than Dee and her friends can bear.

I was really excited to read Creed because it sounded like it was going to be a really creepy thriller. It started off good, but gradually started to go downhill for me. Everything started to feel way too rushed towards the end and it was also slightly too gory for me. 

Creed follows our three main characters Dee, Luke & Mike who have all lied to their parents/guardians about where they'll be for the next three days so that Dee could surprise her boyfriend Luke for his birthday. Their car breaks down so they decide to walk and try to find some help. They come across a deserted town with an emergency siren blaring, decide to go to an abandoned gas station, a grave yard and finally break into someones house. All the while not coming across a single person. Dee has a bad feeling about the place, and she's right to. Creed had all the usual signs of a bad horror movie, and I love a bad horror movie as much as the next person so I honestly thought I was going to enjoy it.

To be fair, I did enjoy the beginning. It did have a creepy and eerie feel to it when they were wandering about an abandoned Purity Springs. I had goosebumps when I was reading that bit because I was convincing myself someone was going to jump out on them and kidnap/try to kill them. So I did feel the creep factor. But as soon as Joseph showed up and dragged Dee back to save his sister, everything got a bit gruesome and honestly, slightly boring. I lost interest in the characters and really didn't care what happened to them anymore. I kept reading though because I couldn't believe that no one had ever heard about what happens in this town before and I wanted to know whether anyone ever would. Elijah Hawkins was a super creep and made my stomach churn. I was hoping that someone would end up killing him because he totally deserved it, if not worse. 

So, like I said, everything towards the end felt extremely rushed to me. Also, this is where most of the unnecessary gore starts to appear and where I started to skim. I was extremely disappointed by the end of the book because I'd really been hoping for a scary and creepy read, but for me, that wasn't Creed. 

Overall, for me, there wasn't really anything stand out about Creed. The characters didn't stand out, the plot was predictable and I found myself getting bored. There are loads of people out there who enjoyed Creed, but it just wasn't for me.