Thursday, March 8, 2012

Feature and Follow Friday #11

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: Have you ever looked at book’s cover and thought, This is going to horrible? But, was instead pleasantly surprised? Show us the cover and tell us about the book.

While I generally am far too influenced by book covers to pick up a book that doesn't appeal visually, I've had different reactions to two different covers of the same book.  Although I started with the cover that appealed, it's fascinating to look at the less attractive cover and measure my reaction against the actual book.

Brenna Yovanoff's THE REPLACEMENT is the perfect example of a book which shaped my expectations entirely because of its cover. I did not encounter the U.K. version, at right, until after I read it, but if I had, I would never have read the novel. It's horribly cheesy, and somehow reminiscent of the not soapy enough to be interesting TV adaptation of L.J. Smith's THE SECRET CIRCLE.

On the left is the U.S. cover that led me to buy this book off the bookshelf store, without having read any reviews or even having heard of the book at all. I love this cover, and was confident that the book would be frightening and original.  

The interesting thing about the two covers is that if I had to judge the book by its cover, it's actually somewhere in between the two. It's not as bad as its U.K. version, but it doesn't fulfill the promise of its U.S. version. 

Without resorting to the familiar cliche, I like the idea of reviewing a book by its different covers. Everyone has a different aesthetic sense, but I believe that there's a lot more commonality between what we can immediately judge as appealing or not in a book cover  than there is in reading a review. Since a review is always a reflection of the reviewer as much as the work, judging a book by multiple covers is almost an easier way to gauge whether a book will align with your individual taste. 

If only every book had multiple covers! Of course, sometimes the different covers aren't obviously better and worse. But when they are, it's very useful to be able say the book is more like Cover A than Cover B.

21 comments:

  1. I have this book in my TBR pile. I'm sad to hear that you don't think that the book lives up to the expectations based on the cover, because I thought it looked pretty creepy.

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    1. It's a little creepy, but somewhat unspecific and muddled in parts. But there are definitely some moments that live up to the cover. On the whole, I'd recommend it, but I wouldn't say drop what you're reading and run to get it.

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  2. Hopping through. I love the cradle cover. The UK cover is okay but doesn't do it for me.
    My Hop

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    1. I love it too! I think I just don't like portrait covers in general.

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  3. I love the cradle cover too - THE REPLACEMENT..intriguing one.. Nice choices.

    A new follower! Here is my Feature & Follow.

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    1. The cover definitely works. Thanks for stopping by on the hop!

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  4. Not sure what I think of either versions I always see this book at a supermarket but I always put it down I dont know if thats down to the cover or the blurb.

    New follower
    http://katesbooklife.blogspot.com/

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    1. That's funny, I've never seen it at a supermarket. Good for Yovanoff; that must help sell more copies!

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  5. OOh those covers are pretty interesting!

    Thanks for visiting and following my blog! I follow you now too!

    Have a GREAT weekend!

    NEW Follower :D

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  6. I like them both, the carriage picture is interesting. Not gonna lie...the other one caught my eye just cause the dude is pretty hot, haha. New follower :)
    My Friday Hops

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    1. Haha. Then the UK version succeeded! It's so funny to me that the covers are so drastically different for the two markets.

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  7. If I'd seen that book in the bookstore, I would've thought to myself, Tarah would LOVE this book. But I don't think babies should be allowed to play with horseshoes, they might get hoof and mouth disease.

    The other cover looks to me just like EVERY YA novel cover, and they're all uniformly dull, like stylized magazine covers. I feel like when it comes to marketing to that age group, there's a mandate NOT to stand out (maybe only in some genres). There's an opportunity to say something with a book cover just like there's an opportunity to say something with a book's title, but not in the YA market.

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    1. You're so right! I love that cover. I want my future cover to look like that, except, you know, related to the subject matter of the book.

      The horse shoes and scissors are to ward away the faeries who steal human babies and replace them with changelings. So they're actually forming a very sweet and practical mobile!

      Some people find the type of cover with people and foggy backgrounds appealing. As Jessi said above, I think it's whether you find the depicted attractive! It's the Fabio effect.

      I'm not sure if they're not supposed to stand out. I bet there's a lot more emphasis on YA covers than adult, to draw in readers, but I'm not up on the conventions of how it's supposed to go.

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    3. Well, like, I'm sure that putting a hot guy (or gal) on the cover of a book IS effective, and that's how magazines are sold; I just don't feel like it's imaginative, or startling, or intriguing or anything else a book cover could potentially be. Comparing these two covers, one of them says something (whether that's appealing to the biggest potential audience or not, who knows?) and the other one doesn't say anything apart from, "I am possibly a sexy vampire?" I mean, I guess you could say there's a level of intrigue because it's so vague, but...blah. I also think they look cheap as hell for some reason.

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    4. (I meant the "people with foggy backgrounds" covers look cheap)

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  8. A friend was giving away some of her books last year and this was one of the books I came home with. I have yet to read it, but I agree - the US cover is so much better than the UK version! I like your idea of reviewing a book by both (or all) the covers. You really get a different feel for the book from each cover. And I like how you described the book being somewhere between the two books. Not as bad as the UK cover, but not as good as the US cover. Quite an interesting way to review! You should totally do this whenever you read a book that has multiple covers!

    Happy Friday! My FF/TGIF

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  9. I would totally buy the one based on the US cover but would not even look twice at the UK cover.
    Interesting, Tarah! :D

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  10. This book is on my TBR list. I definitely like the US cover better. I'm not sure if I should read this one now...
    Thanks for stopping by my blog and following! Following back :)

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  11. The US seems SO CREEPY. And yeah, I would have never thought they were of the same book. They do not resemble each other even remotely!

    Following you back <3

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