The Best Of: Beautiful Book Covers #16

I’m changing up these posts ever so slightly. From day one they have been called “The Best Of: YA Book Covers” but I found recently there are non YA books that I also want to mention, hence the change in title. I’m not sure how much I like the title right now, but I’ll stick with it until either I’m sure of it or I think of something better.

Influential by Amara Sage

The cover is 100% what made me want to read this (I was given an ARC of it). Firstly, the main character, Almond, looks absolutely stunning and secondly, I love that it’s orange. This is probably a weird thing to say, but you really don’t come across orange covers very often. Maybe I should start a new series about covers based on colour?

I’m not a big fan of the rectangle that goes over the face though. I’m assuming it’s supposed to be a phone, which makes sense, but it doesn’t actually look like one so it seems a bit random.

I love the typography though. It’s so unusual to see a cover with a vertical title. I like it.

Synopsis: Almond Brown has no friends in real life . . . but 3.5 million followers online. A heart-felt, whip-smart deep dive into what it would really be like to be internet famous at 17: a cautionary tale for our time from a writer who has grown up with social media.

Almond is forced into the spotlight when she was just a perfectly filtered bump: her mum has been documenting their family through social media since before she was born. And her family enjoy all the rewards that come from that level of influence. Only, it’s not the life Almond would have chosen for herself, and being on a platform all the time has made her anxious and insecure. When the darkest side of the internet begins to haunt her, Almond feels like she’s going to lose everything . . . If only she could see that she has a real-life, too, full of friends and family who love her, and that it could save her.

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

I don’t know what the original cover looks like, but I love the newer versions. I’m a big fan of shells, I think they are so pretty, so what better cover to use them on? They really sell the beachy vibes of the book.

I also absolutely love that ‘pretty’ is in a more embellished font, I don’t know who did the typography for this cover, but hats off to you. That is genius. It’s only a tiny detail, but it really makes a difference in how I view this cover.

Synopsis: Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer—they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one terrible and wonderful summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

I feel like this cover is a bit marmite. I’m aware that a lot of people don’t like this style of cover, but personally, I really like it. The typography is very clean and clear and the tiny illustrations are so fun. I adore that they are famous romance movie poses.

Synopsis: Liz Buxbaum has always known that Wes Bennett was not boyfriend material. You would think that her next-door neighbour would be a prince candidate for her romantic comedy fantasies, but Wes has only proven himself to be a pain in the butt, ever since they were little. Wes was the kid who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse, the monster who hid a lawn gnome’s severed head in her little homemade neighbourhood book exchange.

Flash forward ten years from the Great Gnome Decapitation. It’s Liz’s senior year, a time meant to be rife with milestones perfect for any big screen, and she needs Wes’s help. See, Liz’s forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and—horribly, annoyingly—he’s hitting it off with Wes. Meaning that if Liz wants Michael to finally notice her, and hopefully be her prom date, she needs Wes. He’s her in.

But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love—and rethink her own perception of what Happily Ever After should really look like.