Book of the Week: Swoon

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.

In the pantheon of YA novels Nina Malkin's Swoon is decidedly edgier than most of the other books on offer. There's quite a bit of sex and some drugs, not to mention a heaping of revenge, lust and some paranormal creepiness. When perfect blonde Pen gets possessed by Sin, who is intent on avenging his wrongful execution on the descendants of Swoon, things start to get interesting. Without giving too much away, Sin punishes those he believes have wronged him by using his powers to bring out their darkest desires and urge them to act on it.
 
And because this is a YA novel its not surprising that the protagonist, in this case Dice, promptly falls in love with the vengeful spirit that she accidentally makes corporeal. Problem is its kind of hard to figure why Dice loves Sin at all. Sure, you feel sorry about what happened to the guy hundreds of years ago but in the present day he's a pretty nasty piece of work. And while I do get the appeal of a bad boy, Dice seems to be particularly driven by right and wrong so while its not hard to imagine why she's drawn to the sexy Sin, love is a whole different story.
 
On the whole Swoon held my attention and I did like Malkin's style of writing, but there were flaws, mostly in the evolution of the Sin-Dice relationship. If you've read this book I'd love to know what you thought.