Book Review: Order of Swans by Jude Deveraux

Order of the Swans never quite takes off. A promising premise gets weighed down by flat characters and a plot that forgets to dazzle—unless your love for the genre knows no bounds.

I’ve read Jude Deveraux before and have fond memories of getting lost in her storytelling, so I was excited to dive into Order of the Swans. The premise intrigued me—a secret society, romance, a touch of magic? Sign me up. But unfortunately, this one just wasn’t for me. Find out why I gave the book 2/5 stars and read my review below.

What is the book about?

To Kaley Arens, a PhD student and expert in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment.

It’s only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend Jobi on a visit to his home that she realizes how much she still has to learn. Bellis isn’t the remote island that she believed it to be. It’s another world—a stunningly beautiful and seductive one, with its own royalty, its own rules, and inhabitants who breathe life into the tales she was taught were fiction.

Kaley’s presence is no simple holiday. She has a mysterious connection with Jobi and with Bellis, and abilities that may help determine this world’s fate. Tasked with locating a lost prince, Kaley and her companions—the enigmatic Tanek, a member of the Order of Swans, and Sojee, Kaley’s colossal bodyguard—journey through a land both thrilling and terrifying, where the uncanny and the familiar go hand in hand.

But in fairy tales, heroes and villains are easy to discern. Here, nothing is quite as it seems. And though Kaley is discovering that she can change the outcome of the fairy tales she knows so well, her own story is unfolding in ways impossible to predict, with a destiny she could never have foretold…

My thoughts:

Maybe it’s Deveraux’s first foray into romantasy (a blend of fantasy and romance), and listen, I love a well-crafted or wildly fun take on the genre. But this? This just didn’t grab me. The characters felt distant, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t latch onto their journeys. I found myself disengaging, my mind wandering, until I eventually realized I just wasn’t invested in the outcome.

That said, if you’re a die-hard fan of romantasy and have a higher tolerance for trope-heavy, slightly meandering plots, this might work better for you. But for me, Order of the Swans was a rare miss from an author I typically enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the advanced reader’s copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Find me on Goodreads, Fable, and StoryGraph.

• image source