As seniors in high school, P.E. and I will both be attending prom this year. As a result, there hasn't been a day that I haven't been fussing over my dress. I've stalked  the internet dry and now believe that I have a general idea of what I want. All that's is left is finding and acquiring the dress.

Unlike me, some of these YA protagonist seem to have that covered. The gorgeous dress theme is not a new one, but every now and then there are covers that exhibit some dresses that make it hard for us to keep our jaws from hitting the floor.

Roses are Red

These big and bright dresses are nothing short of show stoppers. The dress offered in Rumor is more about the effect of the red colour but The Girl in the Steel Corset spices up the red with a corset and a designed tail. The reds come to a finish with this years contribution to the list of otherworldly dresses. The Winner's Curse has a dress only a prom queen can where.

The Storm is Brewing

There is nothing like a gorgeous blue/green dress. The stormy blue dress of Across A Star-Swept Sea is obscured by the tides but it managed to bedazzle us anyway. 

Goddess sure doesn't have a contemporary prom dress style but there is an outfit to suit everyone. This one is perfect for those with an appreciation for the vintage. 

These Broken Stars features not a dress, but a gown, one fairly belonging to the daughter of the richest man in the universe. I adore the flowy detailing and emerald green colour.

A Dazzling Shade of White

I've adored Entwined's dress of years now. It is the dress ever girl wants to wear as she heads towards her castle.

The Vixen, takes us back to the 20s with it's gorgeous lace fit dress. This style has returned to fashion with the Royal Wedding and Kate's stunning gown. It's a perfect classical choice.

Lastly, we have the ultimate white dress. Not only is it enormous and hard to ignore, but it's detailed and delicate at the same time; a breath taker.

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Now for the fun part. I want to end this post with a competition. The Ultimate Fantasy Ball Gown contest. Winner gets a lot of love. 

I'll start the voting with my choice, it's tough but I think The Winner's Curse wins it for me.

-MARI

Which is Your Fantasy Gown? 

The Ultimate Fantasy Ball Gown.
	Rumors
	The Girl in the Steel Corset
	The Winner's Curse
	Across a Star-Swept Sea
	Goddess
	These Broken Stars
	Entwined
	Vixen
	The One
pollcode.com free polls

I just had a sudden urge to clean up today, starting with my room, then my books and now my Goodreads tbr pile. The aforementioned to-be read pile has been suffering from a very common case of giantism for as long as I've had a Goodreads account. This isn't much of a surprise because I have a one click process when it comes to adding books to the list. This has resulted in some weird additions. Every now and then, I jump in and delete the books that I have but don't want to read. This time, I had a few interesting discoveries and they included covers of random body parts. Some pretty, others, not so much. I'll let you be the judge.

The Feet

I understand books with feet on their cover. I have nothing against feet, believe me, but they just don't make me think: I WANT TO READ THAT! Interestingly enough, I found three feet covers side by side.

Here are some more:

Feet on the cover seems to be a dead 2010-ish thing and I'm really happy that it's gone. I don't mind the first two covers and I focused more on the pretty fabric in The Lost Saints than the feet. Still, feet aren't the things people want to see on covers, especially if it's there for no reason.

I don't really understand the feet themed covers in the Dark Divine series. I read the whole series and last I checked they were about werewolves; not feet.

My favourite of the covers is Deb Caletti's Honey, Baby, Sweetheart. The feet are 'clothed' with shoes and they aren't the main focus of the cover unlike some of the other ones. It also makes sense. They are on a ride and she has her feet out the window during a beautiful sunny day. That screams fun summer read. I'm not sure which part of werewolf I was supposed to get from the blue chiffon fabric + extremely pale feet.

Overall, the feet covers seem to be a strictly contemporary thing and they aren't as common now but once a book is printed, it'll be around forever and so will these feet.

How Do You Feel About Feet On the Cover?

I can't help it. When I think about the best, prettiest cover art for a series, there is one very clear winner in my mind: Josephine Angelini. Her covers are, in my view, absolute perfection. Let's take a look.

So pretty! That lilac dress is so nice. This cover feels like a cool day at the beach. There are so many cool aspects to the cover from the focus (around her feet it is crystal clear, away from her dress it is blurry) and the font (black outline, burned all around it). I feel Starcrossed is a very pretty cover. Then I saw Dreamless.

Same lilac dress! Same mix of blur and focus! Same pretty font! The colour scheme with that pink/orange sunset is amazing. Whereas the first cover was cool, this one is so warm. If there's one thing I don't like however, it is the girl's hair- it looks a bit unnatural, pretty badly photoshopped at the edges (it's too flat) and the colour is a bit jarring. So, beautiful cover, but not perfect. I mean, perfection is impossible right? And the only reason I notice these little flaws are because I have an extremely high resolution image of the cover I'm using. 

I'm the one in the middle.

IT EXISTS! Absolute perfection! This cover is everything I want in a cover. It is flawless, and I mean that literally. The girl's pose is a total goddess pose: slow, powerful, tall, looking at the sky. The dress is the same one from the other two covers (continuity ftw!), the font is stunning with gorgeous accents on the 'd's and nice dark blur, and let's talk about her positioning: high on a rock, which is perfect for Goddess. The best part, without a doubt is the colour scheme. Cool and elegant, blue, indigo, violet, and green, the colours are amazing. 

This is my favourite cover ever, and it's not even close. I love everything  about Goddess. It is gorgeous and stunning and every single adjective for beautiful ever. It deserves its own post because this s the most perfect cover I've ever seen. 

What's your perfect cover?

-P.E.

Covers and cover art. As humans we are really into beauty, the definition of which is blurry. But it is beautiful. We like beauty in everything; our homes, our clothes, our partners and ourselves. Then why not our books. They are filled with beautiful characters and places so why can’t they have beautiful covers?

YA readers and bloggers are very lucky in the sense that YA literature tends to have beautiful covers. They are bright, decorative, artsy, fashionable and plain stunning at times. They call to you. 

"Mari! Pick me, pick me” 

This is great. Books should be beautiful, it’s called marketing. And literature doesn’t need to be plain, especially when the words inside are so colourful.

Covers like these make me facepalm. That poor author worked so hard and he is probably very proud to be published. But somewhere in the peripheral of his mind he's probably wondering why the cover artist chose that cover.

Why Me!?

Of course this isn’t always the case. I mean if simplicity was a cover instead of a word, Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower would've taken the medal. Yet, due to the fact that the insides are beautiful, and that Chbosky has created a wonderful story, with dynamic characters. As well as some luck and a dedicated fan following, the book is an all time favourite for many and not to a mention Hollywood movie with Emma Watson!!!

Speaking of Emma Watson, would Harry Potter be what it is today if the cover artists didn’t feel like adding the lighting bolt to the end of the P in Potter? That lightning bolt might have been the reason that little 11 years old boy/girl picked up the book and that lightning bolt might've been the catalyst that started the revolution that is Harry Potter!

The YA section in my library houses one shelf, albeit a large shelf but it's still one shelf. So how is the library so full? What are all the other books? I don’t know.

When I walk down the adult fantasy isle, my favourite genre being fantasy. I can’t find much that I want to pick up, despite the fact that fantasy tends to have more of the interesting covers, may it be YA or adult. Walk down the non fiction aisle and I just might fall asleep, unless there is a book on volcanos; then I might blink a few times.

Point of the story being, JUDGE THE BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS! Do it. I know you do it anyway.

One has every right to judge a book because the book is interesting looking therefore it might be good. I think this gives publishers more of a push in making their books more pleasing to the eyes. If you're going to do it, then do it right. Do justice to those books because that author has worked hard and deserves a book cover that he or she can readily boast about. 

-MARI

A discussion with P.E. and Mari.

On Twitter, I saw Kelley Armstrong share this fascinating policy Margaret Atwood has when it comes to blurbs. She basically doesn't accept any blurb requests any more and made a really cool poem to express that. So, let's get the ball rollin' here. What do you think of blurbs? 

It's great that you brought up this topic because I've never really thought about blurbs. Over the past few year they've definitely become more obvious and abundant, especially in YA fiction. Blurbs now a days, remind me of when I go to the library and for some reason the librarians have decided to stick the barcode sticker smack dab in the middle of the synopsis/cover/place that you don't want to see it. What I'm trying to say is, they are not the most desirable things on a cover. I love J.K. Rowling, but I could care less about what she thought about *insert book name here*. Then again, that's just me. What your take? They are obviously present for marketing, I'm not charmed, are you?

I think they can definitely help. One part of me wanting to try Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo is because two of my favourite all time authors, Veronica Roth and Rick Riordan, both recommended the book. I trust both these authors and it created excitement. I originally read The Hunger Games before it became big because Stephenie Meyer, my favourite author at the time, blurbed it. It's always encouraging to pick up a book and see one of your favourite authors likes it too.


That's a fair point and I can understand that. I find that people have different tastes in books and just because they wrote a book that is to my taste doesn't mean they read books that are to my taste. Also, there is the fact that everyone processes things differently and what works for them doesn't for me. I'm not sure exactly why but I've never been one to care much about the blurb. How do you feel about blurbs that aren't done by an author, like the on Raging Star? 

The whole pull behind a blurb is "ethos". The person blurbing must have some credibility. For me, some select bloggers and authors have that. There's no guarantee that I'll like the same book they do, but I have enough trust in them to at least try. I don't read much MTV so I can't comment on the credibility of that writer. That being said, I couldn't help but roll my eyes a little when I read "Better than The Hunger Games". I know this will probably help the book sell, but I don't like comparing stories. The Hunger Games has reached pop icon status- what could compare to it? How do you feel about comparisons? 

To be honest, comparisons really get the job done. I remember being new to YA and looking for the next good read without knowing what to read. So I would read whatever that was supposed to be like or better than my favourite book. However, as I've become more familiar with YA and my likes and dislikes and as I've read more of these books with blurb comparisons, I notice that they don't actually stack up. I especially don't believe them if the blurb is by some company. MTV, great, but who in MTV is saying this? 

I also take them with a fair grain of salt. The way I see it, all the comparison does is tell me if the book is in the same ballpark as the more popular book. It's easy to find books I'd be interested in. However, I never genuinely believe the blurbs.

What Do You Think?

We are all cover lovers here. It's like the icing on top of the cake to have a pretty cover along with an awesome book. But the cherry on top of the icing is when a cover not only has a great cover in your region but also international ones. I love icing and cherries on top of my cake. (I know, I'm a cheese ball.)

Some awesome international cover of books we know and love:

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

This is the more well known cover, I believe it's the North American cover. I really like this one. It's interesting to both genders and it tells you that it's set in Russia with the russian architecture on the cover

German                               United Kingdom

As for the German one, I like how it's like a water painted canvas. I'm not too fond of the colour though and I wouldn't have minded if there was more going on around the borders or in the background. The cover is pretty minimalistic.

Winner: North American

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

I don't actually like the North American cover for this one. It just doesn't do anything to make me want to read the book. Apparently she is the daughter of smoke and bone, but neither are present.

UK                                    German

I like these too cover much more.The UK cover is very bright with the red arch door. I love the handprint on the wall and how the base of the door the colour is going off. It's a cover that makes you want to stop and study it closely.

The German cover much more preferable over the NA one. I like the city being show in the bottom, the colours are more vibrant, and the girls face is nice with some mysterious white blue eyes and blue hair.

Winner: UK

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

This cover is breathtaking. I love how the eye is decorated with trees and a waterfall, very creative and captivating.

Polish                                      Czech

Tahereh Mafi is one lucky girls. Not only does she have some an epic North American cover but she is multiple fantastic international cover. Ahh! I chose these two from an initial 6 or so covers.

Lets start with the Polish cover. 

Likes: 

• Font: It's big, it's attractive and it meshes well with the cover.
• The girls hand on the glass, shattering it. This is probably the first cover that is more relevant to the book, as those of you who have read the book would know. I like that in a cover.

Dislikes:

• Her face. Putting models faces into covers is a risk as they tend to clash with our pre-imagined image of the character. This one clashes with mine and I don't like it.

Czech Cover

Likes:

• The girls face. Yes, thank you it looks much better. I kind of imagined Julia to look like Tahereh kind of and that model looks like Tahereh to me, I like it.
• Colour scheme, it's nothing special but I like it.
• The diamond thing-a-majig. 

Dislikes: NOTHING

Winner: Czech, I just like that model way better!

I wish I could speak all these languages so I could justify buying these beautiful editions. But alas, I cannot so I'll settle with sharing them with you!

Which Are Your Favourites?

-MARI