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Swing Book One
Spinning off from the SUNSTONE universe comes a slice-of-life romantic drama about a couple trying to regain the sexual energy from the beginning of their relationship by swinging with other couples. An emotional journey of two people fighting to stay in love! Collects SWING, VOL. 1-5
- GenresGraphic Novels
489 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 19, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 10, 2023
(Zero spoiler review)
I have an exceedingly long TBR pile. Years of books I've been looking forward to reading just sitting there, piling up. So to disregard them all and crack open a brand-new arrival is a pretty big deal. I'm not sure what it was exactly that made me think Swing would be worthy of jumping such a heralded and lengthy que, but boy oh boy, I sure balls'd that one up.
Lacking the sophistication, the character development, the charm of its cousin Sunstone, Swing is the generic, paint by numbers, mentally deficient relation to that aforementioned, much better title. It didn't take long after starting Swing to realise not only the mistake I'd made, but the scale of it as well. I would recommend experiencing such literary laziness for yourselves, but then again, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for you wasting your time or your money on this dreck.
The characters are the gold medal standard of cliche's. Married couple with kids have slowly lost the spark and for some reason, decide that banging other people will rekindle their romance / save their marriage. Leaving aside the sheer absurdity of this notion for the extreme vast majority of the population, but the lack of originality in the idea is delivered in the most ham fisted and expected of ways. Seriously, there are those blind fish who live in dark caves who saw every single painful element of this story coming a mile off. it's bad, its predictable and... did I mention it's bad?
If you're going to do slice of life / suburban drama, then your characters, their interconnecting drama and your plot have to do all the heavy lifting. When your characters are as bland or as unlikeable as they are here, then you're doomed to fail. Seriously, I've had flu virus' I've been more invested in the lives of than these two dime store, cardboard cut outs. And the cast of side characters are somehow even worse. It takes a special kind of sloppy writer to write dialogue, both verbal and internal this bad, but Swing has it in spades. I'm al most certain enough of my brain cells died whilst reading this to lower my I.Q by a few points.
There was one moment in this book that caught me off guard, and had me thinking 'oh dam, this is something. Let's see where this goes'. But it was completely wrapped up and resolved near to immediately after, as if it never happened. Weak. So weak.
Linda Sejic's art is fine. It's not to my taste, seeing as how an actual pencil clearly hasn't touched a physical piece of paper throughout the entire process. This digital nonsense never has and never will do it for me. And when it's drawn to such a limp and boring story, then even better art than this (like in Sunstone) would fail to draw me in.
Unless you are an absolute sucker for this kind of thing, or your standards are so low when it comes to characterisation or storytelling that you would need a search and rescue team just to raise them out of the hole they're in, then you really should avoid this with every fibre of your being. I've already sold my copy. Good riddance. 2/5
OmniBen.
I have an exceedingly long TBR pile. Years of books I've been looking forward to reading just sitting there, piling up. So to disregard them all and crack open a brand-new arrival is a pretty big deal. I'm not sure what it was exactly that made me think Swing would be worthy of jumping such a heralded and lengthy que, but boy oh boy, I sure balls'd that one up.
Lacking the sophistication, the character development, the charm of its cousin Sunstone, Swing is the generic, paint by numbers, mentally deficient relation to that aforementioned, much better title. It didn't take long after starting Swing to realise not only the mistake I'd made, but the scale of it as well. I would recommend experiencing such literary laziness for yourselves, but then again, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for you wasting your time or your money on this dreck.
The characters are the gold medal standard of cliche's. Married couple with kids have slowly lost the spark and for some reason, decide that banging other people will rekindle their romance / save their marriage. Leaving aside the sheer absurdity of this notion for the extreme vast majority of the population, but the lack of originality in the idea is delivered in the most ham fisted and expected of ways. Seriously, there are those blind fish who live in dark caves who saw every single painful element of this story coming a mile off. it's bad, its predictable and... did I mention it's bad?
If you're going to do slice of life / suburban drama, then your characters, their interconnecting drama and your plot have to do all the heavy lifting. When your characters are as bland or as unlikeable as they are here, then you're doomed to fail. Seriously, I've had flu virus' I've been more invested in the lives of than these two dime store, cardboard cut outs. And the cast of side characters are somehow even worse. It takes a special kind of sloppy writer to write dialogue, both verbal and internal this bad, but Swing has it in spades. I'm al most certain enough of my brain cells died whilst reading this to lower my I.Q by a few points.
There was one moment in this book that caught me off guard, and had me thinking 'oh dam, this is something. Let's see where this goes'. But it was completely wrapped up and resolved near to immediately after, as if it never happened. Weak. So weak.
Linda Sejic's art is fine. It's not to my taste, seeing as how an actual pencil clearly hasn't touched a physical piece of paper throughout the entire process. This digital nonsense never has and never will do it for me. And when it's drawn to such a limp and boring story, then even better art than this (like in Sunstone) would fail to draw me in.
Unless you are an absolute sucker for this kind of thing, or your standards are so low when it comes to characterisation or storytelling that you would need a search and rescue team just to raise them out of the hole they're in, then you really should avoid this with every fibre of your being. I've already sold my copy. Good riddance. 2/5
OmniBen.
July 25, 2023
This is a graphic novel collection of volumes 1-5. It was good. I almost wish it had been more explicit. All the breasts were the same size and shape, there were barely any willies and when there were, they were the same, or only showing a small part. The story was okay. The art style was nice (except maybe needing more variety in the nudity department.) The book actually ends on page 427. The author includes a section at the end where he talks about various things relating to his research for this book, his personal life as an author, and any connections from this piece to his other work (I haven’t read any of his other works). There is also some previews of his other works, which I’ll admit did pique my interest and I will be looking them up later. I like that they also included the front and back covers for the individual volumes since you don't get to see them in this compiled book. Anyway, my point is that there is a pretty huge chunk at the end that isn't the book.
Only issues I had were: 41%- kind of tokenizing a Black person. Dan mentions something later about having sex with multiple different races, I know it isn't *necessarily* bad? I guess? But makes him more unlikable in my eyes. The author also has a section where they play with one Black woman and the first thing she says is something like, "Ever been with a Black girl?" which just feels kind of weird because I don't know if Black people actually talk like that in play situations, where their race comes up and it doesn't for other races (unless you're Asian like Cathy I guess), and the author is white, idk. Also 72%- I feel bad that Cathy counts her calories and it is mentioned that she looks so good after having children and how she had to shed all the baby weight. I know this isn't inherently offensive, it certainly does happen for some women, but it just bums me out I guess.
Anyway plot summary is that couple who married young and has kids lose the spark and try swinging, with some bumps in the road, end up happily married many years down the road. (I liked all the time jumps- i.e. "3 years later, etc.) I hope people irl can communicate and end up happily like Dan and Cathy if swinging is what they wanna do! Yay for ethical non-monogamy for those that it works for.
Edited to change from 4 to 3 stars because even though there weren’t many issues with it, I probably wouldn’t reread it again and it could have been spicier.
Only issues I had were: 41%- kind of tokenizing a Black person. Dan mentions something later about having sex with multiple different races, I know it isn't *necessarily* bad? I guess? But makes him more unlikable in my eyes. The author also has a section where they play with one Black woman and the first thing she says is something like, "Ever been with a Black girl?" which just feels kind of weird because I don't know if Black people actually talk like that in play situations, where their race comes up and it doesn't for other races (unless you're Asian like Cathy I guess), and the author is white, idk. Also 72%- I feel bad that Cathy counts her calories and it is mentioned that she looks so good after having children and how she had to shed all the baby weight. I know this isn't inherently offensive, it certainly does happen for some women, but it just bums me out I guess.
Anyway plot summary is that couple who married young and has kids lose the spark and try swinging, with some bumps in the road, end up happily married many years down the road. (I liked all the time jumps- i.e. "3 years later, etc.) I hope people irl can communicate and end up happily like Dan and Cathy if swinging is what they wanna do! Yay for ethical non-monogamy for those that it works for.
Edited to change from 4 to 3 stars because even though there weren’t many issues with it, I probably wouldn’t reread it again and it could have been spicier.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2023
This was different and it was nice to see what this kind of experience was about. This is my first time reading about this type of area. I had no idea what to expect but this seems like a great way to start. They were very good at telling communication and trust was very important. Sometimes they just was their them self. These two had an early marriage and they found a way to keep the marriage going by opening up. The book shows you want a relationship is the downs and up. They opening up with each other and be honest. This book made this as a real life. How life is like and how to make it work out. I really glad I found this book and I'm glad that I have read it. It shows so much and opens eyes for someone who didn't understand.
March 31, 2025
For me the bar was very low for this book. It about met them, which is good I guess. The art was fine. For a book involving nudity that aspect wasn’t done very well. Especially the nipples. Story wise, the pacing was solid. The characters were fine. Overall it was just a bit below decent id say. I wouldn’t recommend it to others however.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews