Swoon

by Nina Malkin Narrated by Caitlin Greer

Overview

Sin is coming... Prepare to Swoon.

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?

"Sexy and deeply seductive...Swoon will make your every sense tingle!"
--Melissa de la Cruz, bestselling author of the Blue Bloods series

“A captivatingly unique story of first love. Nina Malkin's smart, vivid writing is a breath of fresh air. Simply unforgettable . . . Swoon will haunt you.”
--Lara Adrian, bestselling author of the Midnight Breed series

"Swoon is (forgive the pun) divinely swoon-worthy. Fast, sexy, clever--fans of Twilight have a new heroine to root for. I couldn't put it down!"
--Karen Marie Moning, bestselling author of the Highlander and Fever series

"A spine-tingling collision of past and present, revenge and justice, lust and rage. True love has never been so truly terrifying." --Robin Wasserman, author of the Seven Deadly Sins series and Skinned

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

If ever a YA novel were primed for late-night Cinemax adaptation, it's Malkin's (The Uncensored Confessions) latest. Protagonist Dice (who has visions) moves to Swoon, Conn., and, one day, while swinging on a tree, her cousin Pen awakens a restless, vengeful spirit, Sinclair Youngblood Powers. He initially inhabits Pen's body, but eventually gains a body of his own after Dice turns him into a gorgeous, living, breathing golem named Sin. Pre-golem, Sin turns Pen into the horny center of Swoon, and as a golem, Sin continues to wreak sexual havoc on the town-including deflowering Pen, a "Homecoming Orgy" (where a sexual assault occurs and is then mocked) and a spanking scene. While Malkin's prose has a jarring (yet pleasing) lilt to it-her chapters begin with short, vivid statements and Dice offers pithy observations about whatever is happening at the moment-her style is not enough to salvage what comes across as more a series of orgasms and innuendo than an actual story. This book makes Gossip Girl look like Sweet Valley High without the fun and irony. Ages 16-up. (May)

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School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up

After the death of her best friend, Candice finds herself uprooted from NYC to a posh small town in Connecticut. Things are going reasonably well, until a midsummer escapade leads to her cousin Pen's near-death experience and possession by a vengeful pre-Revolutionary spirit. Sinclair Youngblood Powers wreaks havoc in town by using Pen's body, and when he tricks Dice into giving him living (and very handsome) flesh, the town goes wild. With Sin at the center, affairs and orgies abound from high school students to retirees. Sin is on a mission to make the descendants of the original settlers pay for his wrongful conviction and hanging more than 200 years before. Dice's growing feelings of love may be the town's downfall or only hope of salvation. Malkin takes a far-fetched premise and gracefully navigates it with intelligence and skill. While she doesn't skimp on the sexually charged atmosphere (the character of Sin and the importance of Dice's mission to stop him would feel hollow without it), she manages to describe the goings-on in a narrative somewhere between explicit acts and puritan pureness. Even the ending is satisfying. Long-term consequences of the tumultuous autumn are discussed, and while characters are left with contentment, they are not provided with pat happily-ever-afters.-Cara von Wrangel Kinsey, New York Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

Recently transplanted from New York City, troubled hipster and semi-psychic Candice-nicknamed Dice-is trying to make the best of her new stuffy, suburban life in Swoon, Conn. An unfortunate accident with her cousin Pen leads to the materialization of a vengeful spirit named Sin, who briefly possesses Pen until Dice releases him into a golem-like earthly body. Not without his own agenda, Sin is seeking retribution upon the inhabitants of Swoon for the murder of his beloved, centuries earlier. Dice, full of teen angst and hormones, is immediately smitten by handsome Sin, leading to some rather uncomfortable scenes while he inhabits her cousin and building into a tense frenzy of "will-they-or-won't-they" once she sets him free. Sin exacts most of his revenge in a sexual nature, creating a frantic and at times violent lust in his victims. Readers looking for another Twilight may be disappointed; while the romantic tension smolders between Sin and Dice, the sex abounds between the denizens of Swoon, with little left to the imagination in this oddly erotic outing. (Fiction. YA)

From the Publisher

"Sexy and deeply seductive...Swoon will make your every sense tingle!" — Melissa de la Cruz, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Blue Bloods series

"Fast, sexy, clever — fans of Twilight have a new heroine to root for. I couldn't put it down!" — Karen Marie Moning, bestselling author of the Highlander and Fever series

"A captivatingly unique story of first love. Nina Malkin's smart, vivid writing is a breath of fresh air. Simply unforgettable...Swoon will haunt you." — Lara Adrian, bestselling author of the Midnight Breed series

"A spine-tingling collision of past and present, revenge and justice, lust and rage. True love has never been so truly terrifying." — Robin Wasserman, author of the Seven Deadly Sins series and Skinned

MARCH 2010 - AudioFile

Caitlin Greer's perky voice captures the character of 17-year-old Dice, the spunky narrator of Malkin's offbeat, sexually-charged tale of a dangerous connection between a human and a ghost. Dice communicates with the dead. She falls in love with a seventeenth-century spirit named Sinclair Youngblood Powers, who inhabits her cousin Penelope's body. Greer paces her narration to match the sassy Dice as she struggles to undo the botched exorcism that made Sinclair corporeal. Greer expresses Dice's frustration as she witnesses the irresistible Sinclair wreaking havoc of the sexual kind on the unsuspecting female residents of Swoon, Connecticut. Effortlessly, Greer differentiates between what Dice is thinking and what she is actually saying. Overall, Greer masterfully gives personality to male and female voices while keeping older listeners riveted to Dice's sometimes-dangerous erotic adventure. L.A.C. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170917655
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/19/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I
Love at first sight must be glorious. I wouldn't know, since at first there was no sight. Smell, yeah-the tangy, salty scent of horses. Plenty of other sensations too. But I'll get to that. The point I want to make up front is that by the time I laid eyes on Sinclair Youngblood Powers-in the flesh, that is-I was already in love with him. Nothing could change that. Not even the fact that he was dead.

Sinclair appeared-in this dimension, this century-on the autumnal equinox, but he'd been with us since late July. That's right, us. Pen's been involved, intimately involved, from day one. Which was, as I mentioned, late July, the second half of summer like haze across a field, and us by then thoroughly indolent, twitchy, bored. "Dice, I've got to do something."

Dice-that would be me. Everyone goes by a monosyllable here-reference Pen, née Penelope-so this past spring, having been plucked from the companionable misery of NYC and dumped in the Connecticut countryside, I took mine. It's fine. Candice never fit; too fancy. Candy, either; too cute. As it turned out, Sinclair adopted a tidy truncation too. Can you guess? I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Clair.

But I'm jumping ahead. Let me focus, let me feel it-that fervent midsummer afternoon in the village green, Pen and me, free and idle.

"Watch this." She jumped up, stubbed the joint we'd been sharing onto the stone fence (never would the potential consequences of smoking pot in plain sight even occur to my cousin), then took off at a trot. Me, toasted, I just want to loll, let my mind go off while my body indulges inertia. Pen, no-she had the remarkable goofball gusto to go climb a tree.

Physically, the girl could do anything. Throw and catch with agility and accuracy. (I could duck.) Dive and swim and water-ski. (I could . . . not drown.) Even in flip-flops she scrambled up that tree like a monkey, hoisting herself onto carbuncles that stuck out from the trunk like mutant broccoli. Pen knew the tree, had grown up with it, and must have scaled it countless times. Still, it's huge, a handsome, ancient ash. Grabbing at branches, strong of grip and sure of foot, she was soon half lost in foliage-saw-toothed leaves and clusters of purple-black buds. I got off the fence to stand below, admire her ascent. Pen was high, literally. Then, with a rustle, she changed course from vertical to horizontal.

"Dice!" she called from her limb. "Can you see me?"

A patch of tan skin, a swatch of blue shorts. I saw her. Apparently I wasn't the only one. There, across the village green, lounging legs splayed on a bench with some cohorts, was Kurt Libo, his antennae up. He'd picked up that Pen Leonard-the Pen Leonard-was going out on a limb. Not that Pen has to do much to capture the attention of any sentient being, especially if male. With those breasts and that silken bolt of blond hair, all she has to do is breathe. And what did she do with this embarrassment of rapt male riches? Not much. Banked it, maybe, in case she wanted a favor later, or gave a groan that turned into a giggle. The way guys behaved in her presence, Pen thought it was funny.

Further on she crept, hands and knees, fingers and toes. Then she cursed, and one of her flip-flops swished down. The limb she'd picked was thick, but it bent with her weight.

"Pen, you are a cuckoo bird," I said, more to myself or the universe than her.

"What? Louder!"

Hmm, so-she'd noticed Kurt had noticed her. That was to be my role, then. Fine. I could play emcee, no problem. "Pen!" I shouted. "Pen, you're crazy! Oh my God, you'll kill yourself !" Overwrought lines from some soap opera script. I didn't have to turn to know that Kurt's radar for girls gone wild was in full blip. I hollered some more, waved my arms. I didn't have to look to know that Kurt was on his way, friends in his wake, with their slouchy, gas station saunter.

At some point during my theatrics I felt a prickle of fear, the plain and simple fear that Pen could get hurt. Yet before I could fix on how unfair that was-I wasn't supposed to know such fear, not now, so soon, not here, in Swoon-there came a familiar, tingly foretaste. That anticipatory tremor, that distant thunder roll. There wasn't a thing I could do about it. There never is. So I let it course through me with secret not-quite delight.

Right about then Pen wrapped her legs around the branch, emitted a shriek, and let go. The bough dipped, and she dangled like a lantern, ankles locked, hair a cascade, bra threatening to disgorge out the scoop of her T-shirt.

"Holy crap!" from someone.

"Nice!" from someone else.

Hooting, whistles, applause. Kurt, his boys.

Pen may have been laughing, too, but it sounded strangled-it must be hard to laugh upside down. But oh the ease and grace of her swing, like she could do it and eat a sandwich; I was impressed. Only the awe got shoved aside, diminished by a second, stronger tremor that didn't seem related to Pen at all.

Not even as she fell.

Talk about buzz kill. Energy versus gravity. Arms and legs pawing at elusive leaves and then the utter emptiness of air. Torso twisting like a cat righting itself post-plunge. Only Pen's no cat. She body-slammed onto the ground, hard. The impact reached the soles of my feet while a cranial choir sang hosannas of "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I dropped to kneel beside her. Pen was on her back, eyes closed. She was very, very still. My mouth was open, but her name hid behind my tonsils. Kurt and company hovered nervously, wondering if somehow they could be held responsible. Them. Yeah, right.

Then, the third tremor-a steamroller with thorns this time-and with it, the equine smell. The world folded in and out like accordion bellows, and suddenly none of this was here. No, it was-but it wasn't the same. The tree wasn't nearly as mighty. The day was different, too; drizzly, the sun off duty. Pen, Kurt, et al were absent, but there was a crowd. This was . . . an event. A spectacle. The atmosphere was thick with it. Every one of these people had something to feel, and none of it was good. Then, with a time-wrenching twist, I was back again, kneeling by Pen, and her eyes shot open. Except they weren't her eyes. Pen's eyes are indigo, same color as mine-her mother's eyes, my mother's eyes. These were shards of onyx, sharp and black.

"You put to death this day an innocent man!" cried Pen, who was not Pen.

"What the . . . ?" wondered Kurt, or someone, a distant insect.

"You convict me of murder-what a cowardly lie! In truth you condemn me for doing in life what you all dare do in dreams! It festers there in the sweat of your beds, expunged now as this poisonous righteousness."

The voice spilling from Pen was her own, but as I began to grasp that the cadence, the eloquence, the unadulterated wrath could never be, the cosmos convulsed again, and I was once more part of the angry throng.

"Mark me, oh town of Swoon, oh great Connecticut colony, I shall be avenged."

I couldn't see him for all the people in front of me, who crushed forward and howled back. I could feel him, though, his rage and his terror. The onslaught of his oath seized me from the inside, held my heart like a shipwreck victim clings to flotsam.

"So warn your children's children's children and beyond-warn them well!"

The assembly roared scorn, and tightened together as fibers on a loom. They're going to do it, I thought, all at once comprehending. String him up on this very tree. It takes a while to hang a man. He must have been strong; he must have fought. But at last he was well and truly dead, for the knots and clots of the crowd began to unravel and disperse.

For me, the world flexed in and came out the other side. There was sunshine. And there was Pen.

"Dice . . . ," she said weakly, her eyes-they were hers-on mine. "Did I do something dumb?"

Relief was oxygen, brisk and blessed. "Yeah . . . no," I told her. "You fell. You probably shouldn't try to move right now. I think you lost consciousness or something."

"Whoa . . . really?" She blinked. Tickly shards of hair covered her face. I smoothed some away with a finger. "I think I'm okay," she said. "Nothing . . . really hurts."

Me? I was burning up, but it would pass. I studied Pen. The position of her body was normal; nothing stuck out at odd angles. My cousin is one of those indestructible people. One of those lucky people nothing bad or weird ever happens to. A bouncy rubber ball of a girl. Except something about the way Pen's glance flicked to Kurt's-the way she seemed to suspend him for a second with an almost sexy smile-made me wonder if such people genuinely exist, or if they're just a legend we hold to so we can feel safe.

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