I often express fascination with book covers and their design – either their lack of, their similarities in or their stunning beauty – and 2018 seems to be a stellar year for gorgeous cover design! Jennifer (Booktrovert) and I curate a massive BookAlikes collection over on Riffle (there are 3 full collections: One, Two and Three) and I also keep a Pinterest page called (Book) Cover Loving where I pin covers of the books I love and find so appealing. As well, each year in my annual Year-End in Reviews, I’ve posted my favourite covers, like I did here in 2017 and 2016. Clearly, there is devotion to book cover design!! So it should be no surprise that I’ve been taking notice of the covers of books being published this year and I’m seeing some of the most beautiful book covers ever! Clicking on these covers will take you to their descriptions and just possibly you’ll be adding these lovelies to your ever-toppling pile of books to read too. ;-)
Flamingos!
Flamingos are gracing the cover of a few books this year, including the most anticipated new Kate Atkinson!
Florals!
Florals are making a bold statement this year! So many floral covers, yet each are unique so that they do not fall into BookAlikes at all. Just feast your eyes upon these beauties:
Black & White
While devoid of bold colour, these covers are still strikingly beautiful!
Bold & Beautiful Colours!
Still, there are some examples where tired and overused cover designs are persistently being used for 2018 covers, and could easily be added to their existing siblings in our BookAlikes collection. I’ll use but one style of over used cover design here, even though many more could be used, but that could fill an entire and separate post! I really only wanted to draw more attention to the gorgeous covers being published this year as profiled above instead.
What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw is being published this year. This cover design has become beyond tired and due to the success of its original, published in 2012, Where’d You Go, Bernadette means it is too often being replicated. There are a number of BookAlikes to Semple’s cover design, but I’ve only included one additional as published in 2015 to demonstrate its persistent use over the last six years.
Jennifer noted that Historical Fiction novels could use a change in their cover design as well. This is but one example of the same style being used, but there are about 2 or 3 other designs that are constantly (constantly!) used for HF book covers. The cover where the woman has her back to us, looking out a window, out at the sea, etc. is but one design Jennifer notes is abused for HF. This is only but a very small sampling of this example:
But really, 2018 is a banner year for gorgeous covers and there hasn’t been too many times where BookAlikes have been found, yet. I really only wanted to show those covers that caught my eye and had me rushing to read their descriptions, hoping they were as wonderful as their book covers! The ones I’ve included above are indeed all listed in my TBR mountain. ;-) (and also….my head exploded because of all the books that I need/want/must read! All at once – when will I be given all the time to just read all the books??)
Don’t you think gorgeous cover design adds to the reading experience? Have I missed any that have caught your eye this year?
