Comparable Cover

I've been spending a lot of time lately in the YA section of the library, as well as searching for books to read on GoodReads. At first I thought it was just me picking up the same few books, over and over. But I finally realized that it's not me; it's the books. For some reason YA books seem to be centered around the same few designs.

The most common cover I'm seeing is the Twilight rip off. I have to admit that I love the Twilight Saga covers. The red apple, flower, ribbon, and chess board have a simplicity to them and capture the essence of the books. Then I noticed another book sitting near the shelf at Target, Wuthering Heights and right there beside it Pride and Prejudice. Both sporting shiny black covers adorned with a splash of red. For those interested, Romeo and Juliet suffered a similar re-issuing. Sadly, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan has also had this treatment. I loved the previous covers of the book. A girl looking at the camera through the branches of the trees, looking out into the unknown. The new cover just screams, vampire romance, which it definitely is not.

The other cover design, maybe slightly more original is the gray scale distraught/stoic girl or boy. These at least vary in gender and pose, but really they all emit the same vibe; Gothic story. I truly think that this has just become a staple cover design that artists are simply slapping any pretty goth cover. The biggest culprit has to be Fallen series by Lauren Kate. The covers of Fallen and Torment  are beautiful, moody and mysterious (sadly I can't say the same for Passion, the third book in the series. And yes, I realize Fallen has a blue tint to it). So if I think they're so great why say they were just slapped on? Well, as you can see below, the girl is pictured with long, flowing, black hair. In Fallen, Luce has short - very short - hair. Yes, there is a mention of her once having long hair, but for the entire book she has short black hair. I had hopes that the cover would match Luce more in Torment, after all, she had time to grow it out. Sadly, this didn't happen. Instead, Luce bleached her hair blond. Yeah, this is one cover that seems to have had an artist that didn't even glance at a character profile, read the book, or have anyone who had read the cover look at the work before printing. Here's a few covers that fall into the Gray Scale Covers:

I'm not even going to get into the private school gate covers, simply because I tried to read the Vampire Diaries once and didn't make it past the first chapter. All I can do is hope that readers begin to take a more varied approach to the books the buy when judging a book by its cover.