An Interrobang Faceoff: More Cover Matters
You might have noticed that we Interrobangs are an opinionated crowd.
It’s true! We have Feelings about Things, and we’re not afraid to share them.
And sometimes–gasp!–we don’t even agree.
Take Sean’s post on Saturday. In it, he posited that Young Adult covers are widely embarrassing, and contribute to an “image problem.” He writes of an imaginary adult reader:
Keep in mind, you don’t know much about YA. (And before you demand that our hypothetical reader become better acquainted with a publishing category before dismissing it, ask yourself how much you really know about epic fantasy or chic-lit or whatever genres you’ve decided you don’t care for.) You don’t know about authors like Justine Larbalestier or Meg Rosoff; there’s a good chance you won’t even realise that contemporary YA still exists, so rapidly has it vanished under a rising tide of badly-written pap.
I certainly wouldn’t blame you for thinking that YA begins and ends with this season’s ‘big name’ paranormal/dystopian romance. Which is exactly why YA has an image problem.
When Sean’s post popped up in my Google Reader, I initially found myself nodding along. Yes, the images he shared were very photoshopped! No, those boys don’t look like teenagers at all! These covers could make teenagers feel bad about themselves. That’s a problem!
Then I reached his gallery of “good” covers–the type he’d like to see in YA. And . . . uh . . .
. . .
. . . really, dude?
Covers serve several purposes. Their primary purpose is to catch the eye of a potential reader. Covers that are bright, flashy, opalescent, and nicely composed all do that. Enticing a reader to pick up a book is the first step to getting someone to buy it.
Frankly, bland, abstract covers–text superimposed on waterlilies (snooze!)–don’t do that too well. So I’m not entirely sure the covers linked above would do much for sales.
There’s a reason these covers work for adult literary fiction, though, and that’s because they convey a certain gravity and seriousness. “Read me,” this book declares, “while drinking tea at your favorite coffee shop. I’ll help you quietly contemplate your life.” Part of this is gravity by association; we know that we’re in for a serious, literary read because this is what serious, literary books always look like.
And that brings me to the second purpose of a cover, which is to make an implicit promise to the reader about the content within.
A reader of paranormal romance should be able to guess the genre from a book’s jacket. Ditto, science fiction, and fantasy, and contemporary, and romance.
For example, this cover is effective at communicating its contents (magical angst, and even more magical horses):
Alas, poor Vanyel! I knew him, Tylendel.
And it’s a safe bet that this book contains some spacey shit!:
These are the voyages of the Starship Hardsciencefiction
Why is it a good idea for a cover to help a book reach an audience already amenable to its contents? Because readers are often fiercely loyal of the stuff they love, and they seek out books that will clearly contain the stuff they love. Hook a reader and they’ll stay with you for many, many books. I speak from experience here–I own more Anne McCaffrey novels than I do books by any other person, all because I saw this book cover when I was thirteen, and was excited by the really, really realistic dragon:
I even have a Pernese dragon tattoo. No joke!
I’m not citing these covers because I think they’re particularly aesthetically pleasing; they’re definitely dated and they all have their flaws. But I hope they illustrate why there’s really nothing wrong about the following covers:
A paranormal romance . . .
A historical fantasy set in ancient China . . .
Tallyho, Steampunk!
I think it’s important to note that people who are passionate about these kinds of books don’t find them embarrassing. I was never embarrassed to read a book with a dragon on it, or with a space ship on it. And most teen readers aren’t embarrassed to read books representative of their tastes, either.
There has been a trend, though, to obscure a book’s true contents. I assume that this is for the benefit of “reaching a wider audience” because it almost always means “removing the embarrassing stuff that literary or adult readers worry will make others look down on them.”
As you can imagine, I find this practice incredibly lame.
Why? Because three years ago, I decided that I wanted to get back into YA. And I wanted to read some great young adult science fiction, because that’s what I’ve always loved. It was not hard to easily find sci-fi when I was a teen. But the only sci-fi books I found (after a preposterous amount of searching) looked like this:
What’s worse, Academy 7 gave no indication it was sci-fi from any of the text on the inside or outside cover. Nada!
And this misrepresentation doesn’t only happen with science fiction. I recently read two absolutely devastating contemporary novels about the implosions of young lives. One looked like this:
The other, like this:
In both cases, people responded in surprise to my reviews. “I thought this book was a lighthearted girly novel! I think I’ll look this up!” Meanwhile, in the case of both Academy 7 and Singing the Dogstar Blues, reviews abound where the reader experienced some sense of dismay in realizing that they’d been tricked into reading a sci-fi novel. As much as I love sci-fi, I can’t blame them. Readers know when they’re being lied to! And being tricked is never fun!
I don’t think the current state of covers in YA is flawless. I think too many covers perpetuate the same body shaming in young girls through the promotion of unrealistic beauty that most teen magazines do. Sure, they’re overphotoshopped. And sometimes the cover model is too old, or ridiculously thin, or wearing a stupid prom dress, or (ugh) the wrong race. I’d love to see covers that reflect teenagers as teenagers really are.
But do I think YA covers are embarrassing?
No freakin’ way.
54 comments
“I saw this book cover when I was thirteen, and was excited by the really, really realistic dragon” – between the awesome character names and the dragon-passion, I love teenaged Phoebe. Also, this post. I don’t run into this problem too terribly often, but I agree that kids want to know what they’re buying. Everyone does.
Teen Phoebe was full of dragon-passion (I mean, look at the veins on those wings! So realistic!!).
But, yeah. I can somewhat understand, say, repackaging the Harry Potter books with adult covers once they’d reached a wider audience, but that doesn’t eliminate the necessity of covers that correctly communicate the contents in the first place.
YES FREAKIN’ YES.
#agreed
That sparkly Matched cover is cheesy as hell
Then I reached his gallery of “good” covers–the type he’d like to see in YA. And . . . uh . . .
Whoops, I probably should have been a bit clearer on this. Those were just examples of covers I like in general, not for any particular category or genre. I like understated covers over ‘flashy’ or overly ‘eye-catching’ ones, but obviously the God of Small Things one isn’t going to work for SF (unless it’s very literary SF, I guess).
For example, I like this cover for Ender’s Game better than some of the other ones, because it’s not quite as ‘AUTHOR’S NAME IN GIANT SF LETTERS’. (This one is actually kind of cool as well, following a more modern SF cover trend, although it does make Ender look a bit like a girl.)
That would be my idea of a decent genre-appropriate cover. It’s very obviously SF, but at the same time it’s not…well, stupid-looking. It’s aesthetically pleasing, unlike this.
(Or this, if we’re going to go the paranormal YA route. Blandness ahoy!)
But do I think YA covers are embarrassing?
You have to admit, some of of them are pretty damn embarrassing
Cheesy or not, I think the Matched cover is very pretty, eye catching, effective as a marketing tool (it just begs to be picked up and waved around in light), and successful in communicating the genre (through font choices) and the audience (teenage girls).
Anyway, I wasn’t really talking about design elements like text size. That was a general trait of paperbacks through the 70s and 80s that I’m not terribly fond of, but don’t really care about, either.
You have to admit, some of of them are pretty damn embarrassing
No, seriously. Like, seriously, I don’t think that.
I love you dearly, Sean, but I find the insistence (common among more literary readers) that covers need to be changed to reflect high falutin’ literary traits that are not reflected within a book’s pages tiresome. Again, not all accurate covers are good (the poorly photoshopped covers of the Rampant books come to mind), but I don’t find these embarrassing at all, either. Why? Should I be embarrassed that I read books about girls and swords and romance? Because that tends to be the metamessage in these conversations when one insists that yes, these things are embarrassing. I’m really very serious about this.
Not at all. I’m not saying that anybody should be embarrassed about their taste in books, even if those tastes diverge wildly from mine.
All I’m saying is that this, to me, is embarrassing. Which wouldn’t be a problem (I mean, there are plenty of movies that make me cringe), except that it’s starting to eclipse everything else in YA.
I’m saying I’m embarrassed by these things, not that anybody else should be.
Aw, but c’mon, Sean, your original post, or what you said upthread and I was responding to, didn’t say that you (a 20-something adult dude) find those covers embarrassing. It said they are embarrassing. Very different thing.
Right, but I’m not claiming to have some sort of ultimate say on these things. If I say ‘This cover is embarrassing’, that means ‘I think this cover is embarrasing’ – just like if I say ‘this book is really bad’ in a review, I’m not making any sort of claim to, I don’t know, universal objective opinion (that sounds like an oxymoron…)
What I did say was ‘there are people who think that a book being YA-like is a bad/embarrassing thing’, which is objectively true, in that those people exist. But that’s all – everything after that is obviously just my own opinion.
I think there’s a universality implied when you declare that something “is embarrassing”–an almost impossible objectivity. It’s the difference between saying, “I hated this book” and “This book sucks.”
But perhaps I’m mincing words. Sorry!
Well, this might just be a different way of reading things. If someone says ‘this book sucks’, I’m just going to take it that they mean ‘I think this book sucks’…unless they say ‘This books sucks and if you think otherwise you’re WRONG’, in which case I’m going to think they’re an idiot. (Objectively an idiot, that is
)
However, looking back on it, I probably didn’t make that clear enough. When I said ‘You have to admit that some of them are embarrassing’, that probably looked like me trying to dictate taste, which wasn’t my intent.
Pshaw, we all know you were trying to tell us what to like.
But then, so am I. EVERYONE SHOULD LOVE MAGICAL HORSES.
Oh, my e-book versions of Magical Horse Adventures (that’s what it should be called
) are all messed up, so I might have to go hunting for second-hand copies.
Ironically, the only cover I find at all embarrassing linked here is the Bumped cover that Vinaya links below. And that’s because the egg is an allusion to, like, ovum. Ew!
But I recognize that that’s completely neurotic of me, and I think it’s actually a great cover for the book.
Haha, yeah, the Bumped cover kind of weirds me out as well…although I’m not sure why o.0
LOL, my squickiness is pretty close to “it makes me feel funny.”
Yeah, same here…looking at it is a slightly strange experience.
Which is kind of impressive, if you think about it. I mean, it’s a picture of an egg and a single word. Granted, it’s probably not what they were going for, but still!
Appropriate in light of this conversation, but I had that same feeling throughout reading the actual book. There’s a lot of insanely squicky slang and talk about bumps and humping and (ugggh) mucus plugs.
But it’s satire, so I deeply suspect that it was all supposed to be a bit revolting.
The phrase ‘mucus plugs’ is really gross o.o
Also I didn’t know it’s satire. Is it like, funny-satire, or more straight-faced kind of satire?
Mostly funny satire, though the book ends up pretty touching at the end.
I’ll probably post a review on Wednesday, but, in short, it was the feminist YA satire that XVI should have been.
In fairness it’s a poor quality image of ‘The God of Small things’ the cover is much brighter on my copy of it and it does reflect a lot from the book itself(theme, content, setting…)
But then ‘The God of Small Things’ is one of my favourite books ever and I’ll gladly defend it to the death
FWIW, I haven’t read the book and have no idea what it’s about. And not having read it or looked it up, here’s my honest guess: it has something to do with frogs? Or is set in . . . Japan?
Really, I have no idea. But none of this has anything to do with my opinion of the contents of the books. I’m sure, as a book, it’s lovely.
I, uh, still haven’t read most of it. (It was for college, and I wasn’t planning on covering it any of my essays, sooo…)
But it’s set in India and is about (among a lot of other things) postcolonial issues. I think it might actually be read in secondary school English classes here, since the narrator is a young girl and it’s got a (sort of, if you squint hard enough) crossover-ish appeal, but don’t hold me to that.
Alright, just diving in here to say that the Matched cover? And Crossed (the sequel)?
MOST BEST COVERS EVER OMG.
I realize that makes me sound **exactly** like the teen girl target audience (I’m not), but I don’t even care. I love them. I think one of the big points to be made here is that not only do different readers have different tastes in reading, but also in the covers we like to see on our reading choices.
Ha, I actually don’t like the EXECUTION of the Crossed cover as much if only because her outfit is SO contemporary and the pose is a little cheesy. But I think both are really effective covers, and the first is gorgeously executed in addition to being appropriate.
I wouldn’t mind the Crossed cover so much if not for the outfit and the fact that the image is really badly put together (I’m just assuming all those jagged lines will be smoothed out for the final thing…)
I like the American ‘Matched’ cover. The UK one has the title rendered in an eye-watering shade of hot pink. (Trust me, that image doesn’t do it justice. It’s actually painful to look at.)
(Also this is our most-commented post ever! Whee!)
(Of course, it’s 90% us replying to each other. Good thing we were prepared for fisticuffs!
)
Man, this is nothing. If you saw some of the places I used to argue online….
(And I mean proper, ‘this is the most important thing ever and I hate you’ kind of arguing, which is probably why I find it so hard to get riled up about anything on the internet these days. It all seems a bit surreal in hindsight.)
By the way, this is the most important thing ever and I hate you.
Good rebuttal, Phoebe, though I’m still with Sean in my view of the kind of YA covers that are being put out these days. Mostly blah (but I’m not a fan of photograph covers in general — Invincible Summer‘s I do like, however, but the focus there isn’t on the person so much as using the body as a design element).
I feel the same blah about most current SF covers, though that’s partly because urban fantasy seems to have taken over the genre.
For YA covers I really like, look at this cover for The Maze Runner:
http://www.kozma.curragh-labs.org/blog/?p=2314
I admit, I didn’t love the book, but the cover was certainly instrumental in my choosing to buy it.
And SF can have literary-style covers, too. Take the cover for The Sparrow, which is certainly SF:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/mary-doria-russell/sparrow.htm
I suppose the publishers were aiming for a more mainstream audience, though, and they’re certainly more likely to pick up this book than one drenched in aliens and spaceships.
I also really like cover for The Maze Runner, although I was similarly apathetic about the book itself. The Sparrow looks interesting, and I hadn’t heard of it, so thanks for the link!
No problem.
The Sparrow achieves what I’m interested in doing with my own writing — creating an interesting world where the characters and the ideas are as much a part of the book (the plot?) as the action is. I’m similarly caught by Samuel Delany in his novels where he seems to seamlessly thread science, philosophy, and character together.
See, but guys, I think the problem is that neither of you like paranormal romance, or really heavy, unabashedly non-literary science fiction (“drenched in aliens and spaceships,” as it were). Of course these tastes would be reflected in your taste in covers–but does that mean that covers for these genres should be, as a whole, brought in line with literary covers? Of course not!
I’m not sure what non-literary science fiction is. The Sparrow could have a cover that focused on aliens and spaceships. If it were published in the 60s it probably would have.
One of my favorite SF novels is Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, which is hard SF. Would I say it’s literary? I don’t know. I’d say that it’s a well-written story that pays both attention to language and character without putting focus on rollicking action. And that’s not to say that I don’t like rollicking action, either. My tastes are pretty catholic.
And I can’t really complain about paranormal romance (or urban fantasy) because I really haven’t read any of it. I’ve picked up a few books to flip through in stores, but have been turned off by the writing. Any suggestions?
And, no, I’d prefer covers to be varied, not just “literary”. I was bringing up The Sparrow just to counter Sean’s assertion that a cover like The God of Small Thing’s wouldn’t work for SF. In general, I’d like covers that show imagination and inventive (or just effective) design. Most of the urban fantasy covers don’t seem to do that, in my opinion.
And I can’t really complain about paranormal romance (or urban fantasy) because I really haven’t read any of it. I’ve picked up a few books to flip through in stores, but have been turned off by the writing. Any suggestions?
I haven’t found any that I like (or could even tolerate), but there’s one called ‘Unearthly’ that’s supposed to be much better than the rest. Phoebe gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, and it’s gotten positive reviews from other people whose opinions I trust as well. I keep forgetting to check it out, though.
Well, just glancing at my own bookshelves, I’d say that authors like Larry Niven are probably more firmly on the commercial, rather than the literary, side of SF–I’d put my Star Trek and Star Wars and Alien Nation licensed novels there as well, and YA like Academy 7 and John Christopher’s Tripod books. Whereas Neal Stephenson and Octavia Butler and Brian Aldiss and Elizabeth Moon are all gently straddling or crossing the literary line, to varying degrees. Most of this is intuitive to me, a sort of if-it-looks-like-Porn definition. Logan’s Run? Commercial. The Martian Chronicles? Literary.
(Pohl I’d put somewhere on the more commercial side of the middle. Incidentally, I’m a big Pohl fan!)
My experience in UF/PNR is mostly on the YA side of things. LJ Smith is an old favorite, and I liked Cynthia Hand’s Unearthly (which might not be out yet; I can’t recall). Neither of them were prose masters, but they’re solid, fun reads.
I think the problem is that an effectively designed cover isn’t necessarily imaginative or inventive. An effectively designed cover is one that helps the best audience for your work–that is, one likely to enjoy that book, and perhaps future books by an author–find that author. I’d love if they could do that while simultaneously skimping on ham-fisted art and design elements that make teenagers feel crappy about their looks, but that’s not even requisite.
I’m not entirely dismissing the fact that cover art is a way to inform potential readers of the book’s genre, though. I realise that paranormal romance fans probably don’t have any problem with paranormal romance covers, and urban fantasy fans probably don’t have any problem with yet another female protagonist standing with her midriff exposed in front of a full moon. I mean, I think those covers are dire, but they’re not for me. They’re for people who like those books. (Although I think you could make a strong case for some of them being pretty objectively lazy or poorly put together.)
However, I think the situation in YA is different. Firstly, there isn’t nearly as great a division between genres in YA – everything ultimately gets lumped together in one shelf. Secondly, the stuff with the stupid covers has come to stand for YA as a whole; there’s a certain kind of reader for whom ‘YA’ now means ‘poorly-written romance with a women in a ridiculous dress on the cover’. That doesn’t happen with adult fiction. Nobody is going around saying ‘Adult novels – ugh, that’s all Anita Blake stuff, right?’
Who is that “certain kind of reader,” though? As much as I like to talk up books with cross-over potential, I suspect you’re referring to grown-ups.
Frankly, young adult books aren’t for them. And the primary marketing concerns of cover designers shouldn’t even be addressing the need to make grown-ups feel okay about reading books written for teenagers, who, yes, sometimes like things grown-ups find silly, and even a lot of it. I also wonder if this is an issue with underlying gender complexities. A few years ago, people were complaining about all the pink in YA with the glut of contemporary romance. Now it’s all the paranormal/dystopian romance stuff. I don’t think it’s the entirety of the argument, but I do think there’s something just beneath the surface of embarrassed discomfort with YA that might be a reaction to the way it embraces its primarily-female audience.
But adults now make up a major part of the YA market, don’t they?
And I think some sort of gender thing could be a part of it, although in my own case it’s just that I think the covers I’m talking about look really bad. I mean, I discovered Twilight when I was (just about) still in my teens, and I remember thinking the cover looked pretty attractive. It was actually one of the first things that endeared me to it (then I tried reading it…)
If every book out there was following that kind of style, I wouldn’t have a problem, because I can take that kind of cover art seriously. I can’t do that with a lot of the newer ones.
Well, adult women do. I’m not sure that the bulk of the cross-over audience is particularly embarrassed by that kind of cover, which seems to me like it would fit in fine with adult romance/PNR (and is, I suspect, meant to be evocative of the posters for American Beauty).
Hehe, we have exceeded the new nested comment depth.
I think if it goes any deeper, the posts start to get all squashed. I was on a site recently that would let that happen until each line was a single character wide…
I do agree, though, that the Invincible Summer cover is eye-catching and effective in the first purpose, but I think a darker cover would have been more successful at attracting an audience who would actually enjoy the book and therefore be more likely to purchase future books by the author.
And none of what I’ve said above really addresses your point re: marketing, which I agree with. Covers are indicators of what to buy. Those indicators change with the times and are trend-driven and there’s not much that can be done by publishers except to follow them because, otherwise, readers’ll won’t be able to easily find the work they’re looking for.
Phoebe, I don’t think our TasteTwin-ness extends to cover art!
I’m going to have to agree with Sean here – not only are YA PNR covers embarrassing, they are also unimaginative. Do you know how many variations of the ‘girl in pretty prom dress’ I have seen in the last couple of years?!
I’m not saying YA covers need to be sombre and literary, like the ones Sean used to illustrate his point (LOVE the God of Small Things cover, though!). What I am saying is that you CAN make interesting, fun cover art that reflects the concepts of the book without using stock images. Like the cover for Shine, Bumped or Tiger’s Curse.
Yeah, I think the Shine cover art is pretty good. I could imagine something like that working fine for a paranormal romance, too.
(Although the longer I look at it, the more obvious the photoshopping is. That’s just me being hyper-aware of it at the moment, though.)
I’d agree that many PNR covers are unimaginative, but for the audience that really loves a lot of these books, what’s embarrassing about them? If we’re talking YA, one cover I’ve frequently heard adults giggle about is the cover for Fallen–but are teenage girls embarrassed by it? Or do they find it cool, enticing, and an accurate way of communicating the book’s mood and central themes?
As for the covers you cited, I think that Bumped‘s cover does a good job of communicating its tongue-in-cheek tone (though it reminds me a bit of the Matched cover, and so I don’t know how overwhelmingly original it is). Tiger’s Curse is bright and lively and gets across that the book has something to do with India.
But the Shine cover? I have no idea what that book is about by looking at it. I can assume it’s a literary read because, as I said in the post, it looks like other literary-styled books, and you can kind of assume that kind of thing via osmosis. But I wouldn’t have even considered reading it (though I haven’t read it yet, and might not) unless I’d heard others talking it up. The cover leaves me cold, despite the fact that I might be interested in some of its themes or plot threads.
(Note, too, that my feelings are different when a cover is changed to inaccurately make a book seem more like a more popular genre that’s out there, in a way inappropriate to it; ie, the Silver Phoenix repackage.)
Deep down, I wonder if the complaint is really just that there are too many similar PNR books (and covers that accurately reflect their derivative contents). I’m not even sure whether I agree with that. I think it’s a reflection of the market, and with what sells, and I think these things ebb and flow a bit.
Deep down, I wonder if the complaint is really just that there are too many similar PNR books (and covers that accurately reflect their derivative contents). I’m not even sure whether I agree with that. I think it’s a reflection of the market, and with what sells, and I think these things ebb and flow a bit.
Yeah, that’s probably my main complaint as well. (That, and the stuff I’ve said previously about people assuming that all – or at least most – YA is PNR.) I guess I’d probably think most of these covers looked fine if there were only a few of them, but at some point I ended up getting sick of them.
I mean, if every cover looked like the one on Life of Pi I’d very quickly grow to hate that style too…which I hadn’t thought of before.
I think that a lot of my agreement with Sean in this respect comes from the overpopulating of the shelves with the overpopulation of certain genres. Yes, it reflects tastes and what’s trending in publishing at the moment, but I feel that, overall, it chokes the market.
That’s not a problem with the books (or the covers that result) per se, but of the publishing industry. Even knowing that a flood of zombie or mermaid or dystopian or steampunk novels will eventually leave a number of those novels out in the cold, still they’re published in the feeding frenzy to get the most from the audience of those genres in the short time that such a category is deemed popular.
Not that it won’t always be popular. I mean, who gets tired of zombies? But that at some point the frenzy will die down…
Okay, I’m a little off-topic. I blame my cat for keeping me up all night.
It seems that I’m in the middle zone. No wonder. I seem to be like that a lot.
But anyways, I have to agree with Sean and Phoebe on covers. Sometimes, some covers look embarrassing, IMO. Like, for example I kind of wished they didn’t change the covers of If I Stay to what it now is for its sequel and paperback. But I’ll suck it up though because I like the books and am waiting for WSW. And then there are some covers that are not like that situation above… I can’t bring myself to like the cover (*cough* Personal Demons *cough*) And I always enjoyed the way The Wolves of Mercy Falls’ covers were. They were nice covers.
I still like to say I enjoy non-stock covers or artsy covers like Clockwork Angel because of the textures and whatnot. But mostly, it’s THIS
cover that makes me still like the ones that aren’t simplistic and have models on them. (I do wonder if that cover counts for the aforementioned PNR YA covers though…)
But in the end, I have to add one note to the previous post. Although, for Hex Hall and Demonglass as covers, you should really google the Bulgarian cover of Hex Hall to make you actually appreciate the cover slightly more because it’s just awful.
Meh, my link does not work. THIS
Oh. Forgot to put a ” *facepalm*
I actually meant to say that I think the Wolves of Mercy Falls covers are really good. If PNR publishers would endlessly copy that style, I’d be sort of okay with it
Mm, same.
Does anyone dislike those covers? I’d marry my copy of Shiver. Though the green text in Linger kinda made my head explode!
Hi Phoebe,
I made my way over here by way of another blog, and I love the points that you raise in this post. I completely agree with a series of cover designs that allows the fiercely loyal readers to keep following their favorite books.
But there ARE covers that are embarrassing, and I’ve got two particular YA covers in mind — Not That Kind of Girl (Siobhan Vivian) and Going Too Far (Jennifer Echols) are my two front runners in this contest. I haven’t read Vivian’s work (though I plan to), and I loved GTF and own it. But that cover makes me want to run and hide!