Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
This week’s theme is a book cover freebie, so I’m going to talk about book cover trends I love, and that will definitely nudge me into the right direction when I’m checking out a book.
Romance
Call me a snob, but I am not going to pick up a book with a half-naked anyone on the cover. And I’m probably not going to pick up a book with two real people gazing adoringly at each other (unless it’s The Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole, and that’s the exception).
But show me a stylized romance cover that’s down-right gorgeous? Consider me intrigued!
These covers call to my millennial soul, whereas traditional romance covers make me want to run far, far away. And yes, I know that romance publishers have done stylistic artwork particularly on books by authors of color with romantic leads of color to remove brown faces from their shelves—and that is a problem that needs to be addressed—however, the stylistic covers are so, so pretty. Can’t I have both things??
And YA books are also getting into this trend! Be still my heart, and hold back my NetGalley requesting fingers!
Although I feel like YA stylistically drawn covers (yeah, I have no clue what this kind of artwork is called—if you know please tell me!) are way too realistically drawn/drawn with too many pencil marks? Pen marks?, which I do not like (see: This is All Your Fault, which I really want to read but oh damn that cover is fugly).
~Pretty~ Covers
I love covers that have little bits of everything important scattered throughout the cover. They’re so pretty! I know I’ve waxed nonstop about how gorgeous the exterior of the Stariel books are in addition to how much I love the interior, but holy shit they are just so beautiful.
And yes, I know The Dark Tide and The Winter Duke have nothing whatsoever to do with this theme, but those covers are just so gorgeous I can’t even (publishers, please approve me for an ARC).
Super Sci Fi Covers
Oh, I’m sorry, did I accidentally on purpose put in two books from the same series? Yup. They are that extraordinary.
And huh, despite having little to no rhyme or reason, I do seem to tend to like black and or blue covers, don’t I? I haven’t read all of these just yet, but their covers haunt me and remind me that I need to get started on them asap!
And yes, I’m totally using this post to shame myself to getting to those books that have been on my TBR for what feels like forever.
The Suspected Bibliophile 
I agree about Gideon and Harrow. Some of the best covers I’ve seen in a long while, and really original as well. And definitely with you on the Super Sci-fi category, for which black and blue is pretty much the perfect color scheme (…though I initially got interested in Ninefox Gambit only because I wanted to know why there was a sea urchin in space.)
And I’m so glad we’re getting more and more illustrated covers after years of awkwardly photoshopped people. This is so much better.
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Yes! I love the Ninefox sea urchin cover!
And illustrated covers means more people turned away from the bare-chested mega muscle dudes will be open to reading romance. Win-win!
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I especially love those sci-fi covers from all of these!
(www.evelynreads.com)
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they’re sooooooo pretty and I wants them all
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I completely understand the unfairness of publishers switching to illustrated covers because they don’t wanna put real POC on covers 😬😬😬 but just like you, I don’t like half naked ppl on the covers either and would never buy a physical book with them… these illustrated covers are beautiful and I love them 😍😍
And I haven’t read A Memory called Empire yet but I just love that glowing cover.. definitely what made me interested in it in the first place..
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I feel like half the crap romance gets is because of those awful covers.
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That’s probably true, particularly from non romance readers.. they just call the whole genre bodice rippers and deride it all…
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