Title: Swoon
Author: Nina Malkin [website] [twitter] [facebook]
Genre: Young Adult,  Paranormal
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: Audio
Source: Purchased
Parental Advisory: sex, drugs, alcohol, criminal activity

“Everything you think you know about ghosts is wrong.  Dead wrong.  Here stood no ectoplasmic transparency, no wavering will-o’-the-wisp in a cotton sheet.  He looked…substantial.  But seeing isn’t believing.  Feeling is.  And oh, I felt him.  Hard, callused, long -fingered hands with a potency only hinted at held on to mine as if life, or something lie that, depended on it.  The energy of his touch shot straight into my blood.”

Summary (from the publisher):
Torn from her native New York City and dumped in the land of cookie-cutter preps, Candice is resigned to accept her post, 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?

Opinion:
I have three words to describe this book.

Paranormal.Dawsons.Creek.

UGH

Right down to the overused SAT words in common conversation it was the ghostly version of a whiny powerless girl who lets everyone else in her life control her.

Sin (the resident ghost) was supposed to be this grand sexpot filled with charisma but yea, far more one dimensional.  He came across as an overbearing asshole.  Everything was all about his power and control over every.single.person in town.  And boy, did we see that control at infinitum.  Oh and how did that control exert itself?  Sexually inappropriate situations.  Copious amounts of sexually inappropriate situations and behavior.  Now, granted, kids are kids and they have sex and they do sexy things.  But it got really old that almost every single act of revenge Sin undertook revolved around sex — illicit affairs, teenaged seduction of adults, inappropriately timed orgasms, missing undergarments, orgies….you get the point right?  I would have liked to have seen a bit more variety in the way of machinations.

As it related to the romance portion of the story, I was completely baffled as to what about Sin made Dice love him so much.  He wasn’t appealing in any way.  He was selfish and petulant and like I said earlier, controlling. While he did look out for her in some capacity it always felt more self-serving than as any act of love on his part.  The relationship was completely one sided until the very end when it leveled out a bit but even then that was a result of circumstances related to the outcome of Sin’s quest.

The narration didn’t do much to help me enjoy this story.  In fact, it just might have been the reason I ended up disliking it so much.  Narrator Caitlin Greer didn’t represent the different characters in this story well.  Her voice sounded extremely young and while Dice is a teen-aged girl one of the main thematic elements of the story was sexuality.  It is a story that was intended to be far more sultry than came through the speakers.  Specifically, this narrator lacked the desirability and allure that was needed for the character of Sin.  His most essential of characteristics were his dark revenge-laden sexy undertones and this narrator missed the mark.  By a mile.  No, by miles and miles.

In the end, my low opinion of this book is a direct reflection of having listened to it on audio as opposed to reading it in print.  I suspect there is a possibility I would have walked away with the impressions and feelings that the author intended had I been more capable of using my own imagination where characters and situations were concerned.  For that reason I’m going to conduct the experiment of giving the follow-up a try when released.  Though already tainted by this negative experience with the first book I’m quite interested to see how I feel about the second.

I hesitate to warn anyone off Swoon entirely but if I were to encourage you to read it I would say definitely go with the print version so that you’re better able to create your own experience.