Cover Story

Sparked by a recent episode of All The Books in which Liberty Hardy made up the term “Necro Florals” and “stressed out floral arrangements” to refer to the cover of recent books like The Seep, A Peculiar Peril, The Dead GIrls Club, Supper Club, and maybe Follow me to Ground, I started thinking about cover design.

I am admittedly a shallow person who really enjoys the visual pleasantries. I love it when something looks good and will definitely choose something that looks good over something that doesn’t. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover is a suggestion I’m still working on implementing in my reading life.

I’ve noticed lately a few trends and a few covers that are shockingly similar.

There was a recent onslaught of romance novels with illustrated covers like those at the beginning of this post, on The Proposal, The Kiss Quotient, Intercepted, The Hating Game, The Right Swipe, and Red, White and Royal Blue, and plenty of thoughtful commentary examining the impact of these covers.

There was a vivid floral stage (decidedly unstressed arrangements) over bright backgrounds - particularly yellow, as evident in The Ensemble, The Queen of Hearts, The Keeper of Lost Things, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, and Tin Man.

I’ve also noticed a few books that look nearly exactly alike… to the point of wondering why the publisher/cover design team didn’t realize this, how they couldn’t have realized this, and maybe it was intentional?

As an example, For Better and Worse, looks like As Long As We Both Shall Live. They were published the same year, they are both domestic thriller/suspense genre, and both titles reference wedding vows.

Similarly, I just noticed a book called, Talk to Me, that looks a lot like the book Crosstalk. Both involve people falling in similar style and dress, the word Talk in the title, and use similar colors.

Have you noticed this in your reading? I think these types of happenings are really fascinating. I’ve seen similar covers in Historical Fiction too, but it’s not a genre I read much of so I haven’t done a deep dive there yet. I’d love any recommendations or examples you’ve found out!

Happy reading, friends.