Three Black Swans

Three Black Swans is a suspense-filled coming of age novel written for a middle-grade audience by Caroline B. Cooney, who is most famous for her middle grade and young adult thrillers. Published in 2010, the novel follows two cousins and best friends whose school project uncovers a long-kept family secret that threatens to overturn everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other.

The novel’s protagonist, Missy, is a sixteen-year-old high school student in New Jersey who has grown up alongside her cousin and best friend, Claire. Because the girls are only two months apart in age, their mothers are sisters who are close to each other, and they only live about twenty minutes apart, Missy and Claire have always shared everything. They influence each other so much it makes sense that their taste in clothes and hairstyles is almost the same and that they spend all their free time texting each other.

Their connection seems to go even deeper than this – Missy notices that as they grow older, the girls finish each other’s sentences and often seem to know what the other is thinking. However, when Missy raises the question of why she and Claire also look so much alike, the families explain that their appearance makes perfect sense – it’s just a very strong family resemblance. This is enough to satisfy Claire, who refuses to see anything out of the ordinary about the situation.



In school, one of Missy’s teachers brings up the concept of hoaxes – especially those hoaxes where “individuals use scientific evidence to con a group of people into believing something.” In order to demonstrate how easy it is to overcome people’s natural resistance to shaky proof, the teacher assigns her class homework: to create a believable hoax.

Missy decides that this is the perfect opportunity to confront her suspicions about what is really going on with her and Claire. She convinces her cousin to come with her to school for the day –Missy is creating the hoax that she and Claire are long-lost twins.

Claire is reluctant, but agrees, much like she always does whenever Missy has an idea. During the school’s videotaped morning announcements, Missy and Claire appear dressed identically and announce that they have discovered they were separated at birth. During the announcement, Missy is excited, but Claire bursts into tears. Amazed by all of this, the school’s videographer posts the announcement video on YouTube without the girls’ permission – and there, it promptly goes viral.



Seeing how quickly and willingly everyone believes their “hoax,” Claire admits that she also harbors suspicions about why she and Missy look like each other. Missy and Claire’s parents are oddly upset by the video; it is clear that they have been hiding something from the girls all along. Finally, the girls’ parents admit the truth: Missy and Claire are indeed twins who were adopted to be “cousins” so they could still grow up together.

However, they aren’t the only ones shocked by YouTube. In a suburb in distant Connecticut, a third girl named Genevieve Candler sees the video also. She is flabbergasted to see two girls who look so much like her that it cannot possibly be a coincidence.

Genevieve is a kind and quiet girl who has grown up with somewhat harsh and restrictive parents. When she sees Missy and Claire on her computer screen, she realizes that they are clearly triplets – the “three black swans” of the novel’s title.



The resourceful Genevieve concocts a plan to get all the girls together, which goes off without a hitch. As they absorb the shock that they really are long-lost identical siblings – and triplets at that – the girls wonder exactly how they came to be separated at birth. It is clear to them that one of their parents must be the birth parent of all three. Through research and perseverance, Missy, Claire, and Genevieve finally hit on the truth about what happened to them. Genevieve’s mother and father are their birth parents, who, when faced with the realization that they were pregnant with triplets, decided that they simply couldn’t handle the overwhelming demands that three babies would make on their health, money, and time. They put two of their daughters up for adoption, and that is how Missy and Claire ended up being raised as “cousins.”

The trio decides to confront Genevieve’s parents with the fact that they have discovered each other, a revelation that her mom, in particular, finds almost unbearable to face. Nevertheless, the book ends on an upbeat note: now that the girls have found out the truth, they promise to continue getting to know one another as sisters.