Official Review: Swear by Nina Malkin

[Alexandra Bayer]

Ever since Sin pledged his love to Dice and disappeared, Dice has been trying to keep herself busy with her music and band. But Sin's mark on her doesn't disappear with him, and so Dice dreams of Sin night after night. She knows he's back. What she doesn't know is where, why, or how. But when the ghost of Sin's admirer from the 1700's kidnaps Dice's best friend's boyfriend and little sister, Dice knows she has to step in. Avoiding all magic was Dice's goal, but she'll have to get past that if she is to save a little girl, a love, and Sin. No one ever said love is easy.

This is the second book in the Swoon series. I'd read the first and it hadn't met up to my standards. However, knowing where to place my standards this time, this book surpassed them. I found this book had more meat to it. With the first book, I couldn't see much of a storyline. It was a lot of just 'hanging out'. But in this book, Dice devoted more time to the mystery and her music, instead of drugs and alcohol. The mystery was complex, too; there were many small tricks and questions formed within the larger puzzle.

I found this book evoked more emotions in me as well. With book one, when something surprising happened, it didn't faze me; I just kept on reading, simply because I didn't care enough. But this book had more characters to like or dislike, and more information to build opinions upon. For example, I particularly disliked Antonia, Sin's admirer from the past. And when Dice received the ability to communicate with animals, I was quite excited to hear what they had to say. Emotions are important when reading a book; if you're not interested, you won't want to read it.

There were certain parts of Swear I found to be quite confusing and disconcerting. The wording of it made it sound like maybe what it was describing was happening, and maybe it wasn't. I wondered whether specific parts were dreams, just because the tone was off and odd things were happening, but most turned out to be real. I found this in book one as well, but it was much more prominent in this novel. If I had been the editor, I most certainly would have changed these parts, because they completely threw me off track and made me rethink what was actually going on.

This book was better than its prequel, but I would still only rate it three stars. The storyline was much better and the characters were more developed, so I debated on whether I should give it four stars, but it didn't pull me in like four star books do, so three stars is what I rate it at. I would recommend this story for anyone who enjoys mystery, paranormal happenings, and love.