I will admit from the very start that this post will be superficial. I will not be discussing "beautiful language" or "intricate plotting structures" or "compelling characters." Here I am only interested in one thing—the cover art; which is the one thing we're not supposed to judge a book by, right? Well, I'm not really judging the books shown above. I've only read one of them, and I don't plan on reading the others. My sole interest in discussing them is to point out the fact that all of the covers show people from behind.

Because my job entails looking at lots and lots of books that are being published, I sometimes notice trends in cover art. The trend that has piqued my interest most recently is showing a person (or several people) from behind. I first noticed it in fiction that is marketed to women readers. Sandra Dallas's The Last Midwife and Amy Conner's Million Dollar Road are perfect examples of this. Other examples include perhaps the most interesting "sub-trend" in this type of cover art, which for lack of a catchy phrase I will call "women from behind at the water's edge." I could easily have done a whole post solely about this, but I'll just point out Susan Lewis's No Place To Hide, Karen Katchur's The Secrets of Lake Road and Lauraine Snelling's Someday Home (bonus points for the dock which is an especially popular image for book designers.)

And while people's backs are especially popular in romance and women's friendship fiction, it also can easily be found in other genres, including mysteries (Anna Lee Huber's A Study in Death and Deanna Raybourn's A Curious Beginning), suspense—where the people are almost always running, though still from behind (Jennifer McMahon's The Night Sister and Tom Harper's Zodiac Station), Christian-themed fiction (Lisa Wingate's The Sea Keeper's Daughters and—again—Snelling's Someday Home), and even literary fiction (Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and Nadia Hashimi's When the Moon Is Low.)

Why a whole blog post about this? Mostly because I don't know why it's so popular. Is it because the reader is subconsciously supposed to place herself in place of the person on the cover? Or maybe it is solely to add a sense of mystery or curiosity about the character? ("I wonder what that person looks like, I wish they'd turn around.") Or maybe a cover designer started doing it one day several years ago and other designers simply liked the look of it and started doing it themselves? The only thing I know for sure is that I'm definitely over-analyzing this and I should stick to writing about what's inside of the books—which is what I'll do next time. I promise.