Review: "Swoon" by Nina Malkin

I rushed to buy Swoon from Amazon honestly because I already had an ARC of Swear (with its beautiful cover) and I wanted to get caught up. I finished it in one day and was fairly entertained.

The Scoop: (Goodreads)

Torn from her native New York City and dumped in the land of cookie-cutter preps, Candice is resigned to accept her posh, dull fate. Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut...until Dice's perfect, privileged cousin Penelope nearly dies in a fall from an old tree, and her spirit intertwines with that of a ghost.

His name? Sinclair Youngblood Powers. His mission? Revenge. And while Pen is oblivious to the possession, Dice is all too aware of Sin. She's intensely drawn to him -- but not at all crazy about the havoc he's wreaking.

Determined to exorcise the demon, Dice accidentally sets Sin loose, gives him flesh, makes him formidable. Now she must destroy an even more potent -- and irresistible -- adversary, before the whole town succumbs to Sin's will.

Only trouble is, she's in love with him. What do you do when the boy of your dreams is too bad to be true?


My Take:

Once I got past the fact that the lead characters' names were Dice and Sin (and realized the story wasn't about a lost night in Vegas), the story flowed along pretty well.




Where's Elvis, baby?

Warning about Swoon: Of the YA books I've read recently, Swoon contains the most sex, drugs and rock n roll. (Well, not so much rock n roll...) Nothing that's explicit and nothing that most teens today aren't exposed to on TV every night, just more than your typical YA paranormal novel. You have been warned. Any-whoo...



This guy's done more in two hours than the teens in Swoon do in the whole novel.

Swoon was a quick, easy read and discussed subjects that many YA paranormal books skirt around. I liked the leads (despite their nicknames) and Sin surely lived up to his name.

Swoon had its highpoints for sure. I liked the way it attempted to take a stereotypical WASP town and turn it on its head. I just couldn't get past that I've seen it done before (sometimes better) in Needful Things, The Witches of Eastwick and True Blood.

I liked Swoon, but I just wanted it to be better. I thought the premise was unique and had potential. Now that the story has been established in an okay way, I'm hoping that Swear (with its beautiful cover) will fufill the promise that Swoon held, but didn't quite live up to.

Final Verdict: