{Book Reivew} Swear + ARC Giveaway!

SwearSwoon #2Author: Nina Malkin
Pages: 472
Format: ARC
Release Date: October 18th 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Rating: 3 – 3.5

A promise broken. A bond betrayed. It’s been six months since ghost-turned golem Sinclair Youngblood Powers confessed his love, stole Dice’s heart, and disappeared from Swoon, perhaps from existence. Despite the hurt, Dice has been moving steadily toward ordinary. Dreams of Sin still plague and pleasure her sleep, and the mark of Sin’s love remains on her skin, still sore. But Dice has been throwing herself into music, finding solace in song and sometimes even in the arms of her band mate, Tosh. Life seems almost…normal. The last thing Dice wants is to mess with anything remotely supernatural. But when her best friend’s boyfriend goes missing, Dice has no choice but to become very much involved. She knows that his disappearance was no accident, and it somehow has everything to do with Sin. Because Dice can feel it: Sin is back. And the promises and deceptions he left in his wake have returned to haunt him.
What do you do when an oath of devotion threatens to destroy the one you love?

Ever had a book that when you put it down to do those things you actually have to do while your not reading (i.e: work, sleep, eat, shower…) all you can think about is what is about to happen in said book? This is how SWEAR was for me. Every time I had to set it down I was constantly trying to sort out where Nina Malkin was taking things. I was almost never right and I really liked that aspect, because it kept me guessing all through out.

Dice and all her one-syllable pals (Duck, Marsh, Sin, Pen….and so on) really bring you a full serving of both romance and romantic angst, right along with all things paranormal picking up right where SWOON, the first book in the series, leaves off.

One thing that I had a little trouble with, was language and thusly also the writing style a bit. Now, we do have a few character's from other times in history and their language being suited for them makes perfect sense, if they didn’t speak as if they were from their time it would ruin the effect of the book. However, there are times Malkin will go from “trendy-typical-teenager speak” into something that felt like a forced, over done Dawson’s Creek vocab, meshed with a bit of British slang tossed in for good measure. Since the book is written in first person, following Dice, an 18 year old, American born gal living in Connecticut this was sometimes (okay, nearly always) really hard to swallow. I would actually twist up my face in confusion trying to understand what teenager would say things like “poste-haste” when asking friends to hurry.

If I had read this book with out knowing it was YA, I wouldn’t have pegged it as one. It falls for me, between YA and Fiction, leaning a bit more towards Fiction based on writing style alone. Malkin is obviously a walking thesaurus and remarkably intelligent which flows onto her pages. While I love learning new vocab words, I did have to stop a few times wondering if maybe I should look that word up to be sure it meant what I thought it meant. And I’m not dummy. I promise. ;0)

The story is strong and fluid, and therefore I tired very hard to ignore the obvious hopping language issues I was facing. You get a little Stephan King’s ROSE RED and a little Single White Female even in a tiny way. It’s a never been done before Paranormal Thriller that despite the things I didn’t particularly love about, still feel is worth a read. Both book sin the series are!

 Want a chance to WIN an ARC of SWEAR? Well the wonderful people at Simon and Schuster provided me one to read, and I want to pass it on to you! Simply fill out the form below and
GOOD LUCK!