The Friday Face-Off: An Annoying Cover

The Friday Face-Off was created by Books by Proxy, where each week bloggers can showcase books with covers centered around a weekly theme. You can visit Lynn’s Books for a list of upcoming themes. Join in the fun each Friday by finding a book whose cover is based on the theme!

This week’s theme: An annoying cover.


I almost didn’t post today, because I could not figure out which book to use for this prompt. But as I was scrolling through my Goodreads books, I realized there is a book whose cover completely annoys me! And that is Fellside by M.R. Carey, who is best known for The Girl With All the Gifts. Orbit decided to remind people of that fact when they designed the cover and stuck a big ol’ ugly yellow sticker in the middle (wait, not even in the middle, just thrown in randomly which ruins the balance!). And I want to mention that I really loved this book, so this is simply my reaction to the cover, not the story. Luckily, a few other publishers didn’t go that route so I have some better examples to show you. Take a look:

Orbit 2016 edition | Croatian 2018 edition

Romanian 2017 edition | Hungarian 2017 edition

Persian 2018 edition | Portuguese 2016 edition

Really, this book deserves some better covers. I mean what’s going on with the Persian edition?? Hungary joins the US/UK in putting the marketing sticker on the front, but luckily the Croatians and the Romanians had the sense to leave it off. My favorite is the Croatian edition, it’s very similar to some of the others, but it works much better than the Orbit cover and shows that this is a ghost story.


Which is your favorite?

Posted June 11, 2021 by Tammy in The Friday Face-Off / 11 Comments

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11 responses to “The Friday Face-Off: An Annoying Cover

  1. Ugh, the sticker! I hate those kind of things! The US version would be great without it, so it’s Croatian for the win. Good reminder for me that I still need to read this book — I think it’s the only M. R. Carey that I haven’t read yet!

  2. At least with the Hungarian version it appears to be integrated into the image, though it is still annoying. And actually, if I ignore the sticker the Hungarian version is my favorite.

  3. Oh good choice ! I HATE the Orbit cover, like it’s not bad enough it’s so plain, they have to slap that TGWATG sticker which is bright yellow and sticks out against that blue background like a sore thumb, lol.

  4. Ooof. Whyyyy? Why, publishers? I’m firmly against having stickers on covers to begin with, but especially when they ruin the beauty of an otherwise perfectly fine cover. Even worse when it’s not a sticker but actually printed on top of it. I bought a copy of Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend that had a $1.99 price thing actually printed ON the cover, and for the life of me I can’t explain why someone would think that was a good idea …

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