Three Black Swans by Caroline B. Cooney

Summary

When Missy hears an expert discussing newborn babies on the radio, it makes her wonder about her family. She and her cousin Claire are best friends who finish each other’s sentences and practically read each other’s minds. It’s an eerie connection—so eerie that Missy has questions she wants to put to her parents. But she’s afraid to ask. Still, Missy can’t let go of those nagging questions. So she decides to use a school project about scientific hoax to try to uncover the answers, and she enlists Claire to help. As part of the project, they perform a dramatic scene that is captured on video at school. After the video is posted on YouTube, Missy and Claire realize that they’ve opened up Pandora’s box. Not only are their identities called into question, but so is the future of everyone involved.

Number of Pages: 276

Review

A couple of posts back I wrote how I always wanted a twin, but then that book I read sort of scared me into not wanting one, well, after reading THIS book I change my mind . . . again. I want an identical twin!

Missy gets this seed of a theory into her mind about her and her cousin, Claire. She disregards it for a bit until she overhears an expert on identical twins talk on the radio. That watered her theory, and out came a plot to discover the truth! But what exactly does she want to find out? To see if her cousin really is her twin? To see how her parents react? To find out what is that feeling of a hole in her heart? All of the above. When she manipulates a science assignment into creating a hoax to see if people can believe if Claire and her can be long lost twins, everyone falls for it, hard. Of course being the 21-century, news of this hoax doesn’t stay contained for long. And when word spreads out, mayhem erupts. Is it true? Can they be twins? How is that even possible?

The last Caroline B. Cooney book I read was in 5^th grade I believe. I didn’t really remember how good her book was so I wasn’t expecting much in Three Black Swans. Boy, was I wrong. I was always interested in things like this, long lost twins reunited. I mean, how would they react? Would they automatically like each other? Would they stay in contact? How would it even be possible to find one another? This book answered those questions. And Cooney didn’t just create this possible scenario. There were lots of facts on identical twins that I knew this was how things would work out. How would they react? Like they were blind, but know they can see. Would they automatically like each other? No, they would automatically love each other, although maybe they would feel some hesitations and scared feelings for the future. Would they stay in contact? If they could, nothing could pull them apart. And the circumstances in which they find each other are always incredible. Maybe this isn’t how all long lost identical twins or triplets feel, but this is what I got from the book and it sounded legit.

The characters were very believable. They were all people that I can totally picture meeting on the street somewhere. Well, maybe Missy was portrayed as a little bit too giddy, but other than that it was exactly how I pictured it. There was also Genevieve, who isn’t mentioned in the jacketflap summary, but is important, very important actually for the outcome of the book. The title was something that very much interested me. It was explained several times throughout the novel. I thought it completely original, and perfect for this story. I also really loved how Cooney created this specific scenario in how all the sisters found each other. It was a mystery in and of itself and the way it was portrayed kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Which obviously means that I considered Three Black Swans an excellent book giving it form 1-10? An 8!