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Another beautiful piece of cover art crossed my path a few weeks ago as I was browsing Goodreads. The face of Léna Roy’s Edges grabbed my attention immediately. It wasn’t the giant title, it was the character piece that was painted beneath it. All of the things I absolutely love about this cover can be … Continue reading »

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Three cheers for Kristin Smith, Penguin’s creative energy behind Five Flavors of Dumb’s cover design. She was kind enough to let me harass her with endless cover-related questions. For my first official interview with a designer on the blog, Kristin knocked it out of the park. What were your initial ideas for the cover? Do … Continue reading »

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Yesterday I got a chance to gush a little about my love for Antony John’s Five Flavors of Dumb cover. Earlier this month as I was browsing Penguin’s site, I immediately took note of Dumb and went straight to Antony’s website and blog. I was happy to find a blog post on his reaction to … Continue reading »

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I’m not quite sure what grabbed me first when I saw the cover design for Antony John’s Five Flavors of Dumb – the odd title or the cover itself. At first glance, the cover holds its own in the mood department. Dumb’s protagonist, Piper, appears to be resilient and no-nonsense. There’s a seriousness to this cover, … Continue reading »

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Sometimes I wonder what on God’s green earth was Simon Pulse thinking when they thought it’d be neat to roll out covers that look like this: I get that it’s part of a romantic comedies series. I get that people like covers that follow a design scheme (myself included). But what I don’t get is … Continue reading »

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For one of my what were YA thinkin? posts, I mentioned that frightening covers scare the ever-loving crap out of me. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean I avoid eerie things altogether. I can still appreciate a beautiful cover and be slightly creeped out at the same time. Take, for example, Brian Keaney’s The Hollow People: I … Continue reading »

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An interesting blurb from author J.T. Dutton’s Freaked wraps up its summary in a curious way: “A joyous tale of a teen Dead Head.” It goes without saying that Freaked’s cover is very different from most YA contemporary novels’ covers. I’m such a sucker for titles in uppercase type that work with the cover’s design … Continue reading »

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When I look at a novel’s cover, it’s really hard to not compare it to other covers that I’ve seen before. Or Argentinian Socialist imagery, for that matter. Regardless of its familiar El Che color scheme and look, Lish McBride’s Hold Me Closer, Necromancer proves to me yet again that I’m slowly warming up to … Continue reading »

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I really hesitated on this cover, not knowing whether to call it the result of marketing genius or just plain ol’ awesome design. What do you think? I think I’m split down the middle. When I saw Candace Bushnell’s The Carrie Diaries sitting on the shelf in the bookstore some months ago, I stopped immediately … Continue reading »

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This is an outrage. This is disregarding the fact that in general, faces on covers almost immediately make me recoil. But on this particular cover, it’s not just the fact that there’s a face. Her face doesn’t seem vaguely familiar? Maybe this will help. Oh, Bloomsbury, really?

Bryan Williams