Kat Spears. (2014). Sway: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Kat Spears. 2014. Sway: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Kat Spears, Sway: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2014.

Kat Spears. Sway: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2014.

OverDrive Product Record

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Sway

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1. • value: Friendship
2. • value: YA
3. • value: high school
4. • value: teenagers
5. • value: adaptations
6. • value: unusual
7. • value: first love
8. • value: Modern
9. • value: young love
10. • value: teens
11. • value: new friends
12. • value: cyrano de bergerac
13. • value: retellings
14. • value: New Love
15. • value: unlikely

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Spears, Kat
   • bioText: Kat Spears grew up moving every few years and is still looking for her hometown. Kat writes realistic, edgy, honest, sometimes heartbreaking, often funny books about and for young people. Being a teenager sucked for Kat, and she's still trying to write her way out of it. She spends her free time rearing caterpillars, vacuuming up dog hair, and writing letters the old-fashioned way. Her favorite job, ever, is being the mother of three perfect and hilarious humans. She is the author of Sway, Breakaway, and The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker.
   • name: Kat Spears

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St. Martin's Griffin

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title

Sway

fullDescription

A YALSA 2015 Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick

In Kat Spears's hilarious and often poignant debut, high school senior Jesse Alderman, or "Sway," as he's known, could sell hell to a bishop. He also specializes in getting things people want—-term papers, a date with the prom queen, fake IDs. He has few close friends and he never EVER lets emotions get in the way. For Jesse, life is simply a series of business transactions.
But when Ken Foster, captain of the football team, leading candidate for homecoming king, and all-around jerk, hires Jesse to help him win the heart of the angelic Bridget Smalley, Jesse finds himself feeling all sorts of things. While following Bridget and learning the intimate details of her life, he falls helplessly in love for the very first time. He also finds himself in an accidental friendship with Bridget's belligerent and self-pitying younger brother who has cerebral palsy. Suddenly, Jesse is visiting old folks at a nursing home in order to run into Bridget, and offering his time to help the less fortunate, all the while developing a bond with this young man who idolizes him. Could the tin man really have a heart after all?
A Cyrano de Bergerac story with a modern twist, Sway is told from Jesse's point of view with unapologetic truth and biting humor, his observations about the world around him untempered by empathy or compassion—-until Bridget's presence in his life forces him to confront his quiet devastation over a life-changing event a year earlier and maybe, just maybe, feel something again.

gradeLevels

1. • value: Grade 4
2. • value: Grade 5

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly (starred review)
   • content:

     "Sharp dialogue, edgy humor, and an unlikely hero make this page-turner a winner."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus (starred review)
   • content: "A compelling debut told with swagger and real depth."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "Spears' debut novel sets an update on Cyrano de Bergerac in a contemporary high school, with noir undertones... Raw, honest...A gritty take on the male high school experience."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Children's Book Review
   • content: "Kat Spears debut novel is, quite simply, a delight. It has all the ingredients for an engaging and witty read, laced with honesty and insight that's refreshingly real...the story is gritty and real, unafraid to cross over into the darker sides of teenage life, and unapologetic in its witty and honest portrayal. If anything, Kat Spears may just be the one with some very valuable sway; get ready to be sold."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Meg Medina, Pura Belpre award-winning author of Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass
   • content: "A page turner about high school's victims and villains -- and about layers of callousness that spring from true grief. "
6. • premium: False
   • source: Gigi Amateau, author of Come August, Come Freedom: The Bellows, The Gallows, and The Black General Gabriel

   • content: "[The] characters are fantastic and real, but that plot? The licks and riffs that led to Jesse's transformation totally blew me away, every damn page."
7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from July 28, 2014
     This engrossing debut novel recounts the exploits of high school senior Jesse Alderman, who runs a lucrative business making things happen: “brokering term papers, getting juvenile delinquents kicked out of school, and delivering party favors for keggers.” A possible musical prodigy who abandoned the guitar after his mother’s suicide, Jesse has more intellectual energy than he knows what to do with, and he keeps himself busy to avoid thinking. When rich football star and “all-around douche” Ken hires him as matchmaker, Jesse becomes a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, enamored of sweet Bridget even as he’s employed to manipulate her to fall for a creep. Jesse’s actions belie his affected indifference to personal relationships, as he softens toward people he ostensibly “uses”: elderly Mr. Dunkelman, who Jesse pretends is his grandfather to get closer to Bridget; Digger, his weed supplier; Joey, his lesbian partner-in-crime; Bridget’s disabled brother, Pete—just some of Spears’s well-developed, socioeconomically, and ethnically diverse supporting characters. Sharp dialogue, edgy humor, and an unlikely hero make this page-turner a winner. Ages 14–up. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from August 1, 2014
     Everybody knows Jesse, aka "Sway." For the right price or a later favor, Jesse will get you want you want, but he'll also acquire power over you. He sells drugs and fake IDs, acquires kegs for parties and might even be able to persuade a girl to date a guy. Since his mother's suicide over a year ago, Jesse hasn't bothered with his own emotions. But when he meets the beautiful and almost saintly Bridget, he begins to realize that he might actually have some feelings after all. He gets to know her in order to advise bully Ken on how to get a date with her, making Jesse something of a "fucked-up Cyrano de Bergerac," as he himself notes. Along the way, he teams up with Bridget's little brother, Pete, who has cerebral palsy, introducing the boy to his world of schemes. Even as he grows fonder of Bridget, he still doesn't believe he could have a real romance with her, or with anyone. Spears develops Jesse's character so thoroughly readers will believe they know him. Despite his illegality and immorality, he remains sympathetic, revealing his hidden emotions as he forms real friendships with Pete and with an elderly man he meets while spying on Bridget. A compelling debut told with swagger and real depth. (Fiction. 14-18)

     COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 1, 2014
     

     Gr 9 Up-Jesse Alderman, aka Sway, can get you what you want, no matter what. Drugs, popularity, money, anything, but it comes at a cost. After his mom chased some prescription drugs with vodka and ended up dead on the bathroom floor, Jesse doesn't care about much, as long as he gets paid and people live up to their end of the bargain. But that all ends when school bully Ken Foster asks him to convince Bridget Smalley, an all-around wonderful person, to go out with Ken on a date. Jesse thinks this is just another business transaction until he meets Bridget and finds himself falling in love with her. Now, he's opening up to all kinds of people, including Bridget's younger brother, Pete, who feels alone and damaged because of his cerebral palsy, and Mr. Dunkelman, a man who lives at the nursing home where her grandmother lives. However, the more he feels for Bridget, the more he attempts to pull away from her and anyone who might care about him. And, now that the protagonist has made Ken appear like a nice guy in Bridget's eyes, she starts to pull away from Jesse, as well. From the first page, readers won't ever want to leave Jesse behind. At first glance, this novel seems like a typical Cyrano de Bergerac-type story, but it is much deeper than that, touching on topics such as parent abandonment, disabilities, bullying, and love. The main character's transformation and personality are well developed and believable, and readers will root for him along the way, even though he makes it difficult. References to drugs, alcohol, and suicide make it better suited for older teens. A engaging story that will stay with readers long past the final page.-Traci Glass, Eugene Public Library, OR

     Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      August 1, 2014
      Grades 10-1 Spears' debut novel sets an update on Cyrano de Bergerac in a contemporary high school, and adds noir undertones. High-school senior Jesse Alderman, aka Sway, is the guy who brings the drugs to parties and makes things happen, connecting the nerds, jocks, and ne'er-do-wells in a web of underhanded deals with a cut for himself. He glides through school with self-assurance and swagger. But when one of his deals leads him to do-gooder Bridget, who shows a genuine interest in him, and her brother, Pete, who has cerebral palsy, Jesse gets a chance to move past his party-boy reputation. Though a sizable cast of secondary characters sometimes strains its 300 pages, Spears' novel deftly probes Jesse's complex family dynamics, including his submerged grief for the mother he lost to suicide and his frustration with his mostly absent father. Jesse's first-person narration, sometimes toeing the line of good taste, is raw and honest and marks his growth over the course of the novel. A gritty take on the male coming-of-age experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 1, 2015
      Jesse is good at making things happen--hence his nickname, "Sway." But when he's enlisted to persuade the perfect girl to fall for a seriously imperfect guy, he might have reached the limits of his persuasive powers. This debut, a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac story, is bolstered by snappy writing and strong, diverse supporting characters.

      (Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

popularity

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A YALSA 2015 Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick

In Kat Spears's hilarious and often poignant debut, high school senior Jesse Alderman, or "Sway," as he's known, could sell hell to a bishop. He also specializes in getting things people want—-term papers, a date with the prom queen, fake IDs. He has few close friends and he never EVER lets emotions get in the way. For Jesse, life is simply a series of business transactions.
But when Ken Foster, captain of the football team, leading candidate for homecoming king, and all-around jerk, hires Jesse to help him win the heart of the angelic Bridget Smalley, Jesse finds himself feeling all sorts of things. While following Bridget and learning the intimate details of her life, he falls helplessly in love for the very first time. He also finds himself in an accidental friendship with Bridget's belligerent and self-pitying younger brother who has cerebral palsy. Suddenly, Jesse is visiting old folks at a...

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1. • source: Young Adult Library Services Association
   • value: Best Fiction for Young Adults

subtitle

A Novel

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St. Martin's Publishing Group

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1. • code: YAF052020
   • description: Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
2. • code: YAF058070
   • description: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Disabilities
3. • code: YAF058110
   • description: Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Emotions & Feelings