I complained a few months ago about John Green's Paper Towns which has a male protagonist but a cover with a big picture of a girl (the object of Quentin's affections). I know this would keep a lot of guys from picking the book up which is a shame because in many ways (as a clue following mystery) it's very much a book boys would enjoy (which is true of all of his books and yet they keep getting big girl heads put on the covers!). The paperback cover is way way better though and sports a map and a push pin which is perfect for the story. Hopefully someone over at Penguin has decided that marketing John's books solely to girls might not be the best idea and in the future there will be less of the chick covers. (Not that there's anything wrong with the chicks but you know what I mean..... :)

Pretty Dead is about as in your face vamp/trashy sexy as you would want but it's also by Francesca Lia Block which means after you pick it up (and every vamp loving teen is going to pick this one up) there's likely a lot more story here then you think you're going to get. I love the blatant nature of the cover, the saucy joke in the candy and fangs and just how overt it is. Nothing gauzy/foggy/subtle here; no reading double meanings into any of it. This is a book about what it means to be a vamp which from the Booklist review is not what a lot of other authors have suggested:

"In the book’s most powerful sequence, Charlotte describes to Jared her transformation at the hands of the vampire William in 1925, and how the two murderous lovers were present for everything from the bombing of Hiroshima and the dawn of the AIDS crisis to Kurt Cobain’s suicide and the 9/11 attacks—almost as if their very proximity drew evil. Now, as Charlotte begins experiencing human-like symptoms (a broken nail, a zit, her period), William returns, and he brings with him an awful secret. Block is less concerned about mythology than she is with the malaise brought on by a vampire’s eternity of sorrow. With mournful prose, she has created something psychologically complex, erotically charged, and unusually poignant."

Take that Bella - and your lame ass vamp boyfriend too!

Conversely, Prophecy of the Sistersby Michelle Zink is all about the atmosphere with a cover right out of a graveyard that is all about what it suggests and nothing about what it might really be. It's also very elegant and very pretty in a solemn, sad, serious kind of way.

This makes it perfect for teenagers, in case you were wondering. Here's the skinny from Booklist again: "As 16-year-old Lia Milthorpe stands at her father’s grave, she has no idea that his death is about to set off a chain of events that will put her and her twin sister, Alice, at odds and decide the fate of a legion of lost souls led by the fallen angel Samael. A circular mark on her arm, the discovery of an ancient prophecy, and the strange behavior of Alice all tug her toward the realization that like her mother and aunt before her, she and her sister are the Guardian and the Gate, positioned to help Samael or hinder him as he and his minions try to gain a foothold in this world. Debut novelist Zink sets her story in an old house in upstate New York in the early 1800s, and she crafts the atmosphere as carefully as she plots the story and shapes her characters."

It's all good vs evil and sisterly bonding and mysteries and dead people. Can you think of a better beach book?

Jennifer E. Smith's You Are Here is a very good road novel that will appear in my August column. Emma has just discovered she had a twin who died a few days after their birth. Her frustration over having this information kept from her for almost seventeen years leads her to take her older brother's car and head south to her childhood home and the town where her brother must be buried. After the car breaks down she is forced to call for help from her neighbor Peter who as it happens has already initiated a road trip of his own. The two of them get together and continue south working out the many reasons why they each wanted to run. It's a really good book but most importantly it's a book evenly split between a male and female voice that will appeal equally to both genders. Emma and Peter alternate chapters and each has a very compelling storyline. But if you look at the cover what you see is a map and a car and a girl and right there pretty much every teenage boy in the country has walked on by thinking it's just a "chick novel".

What is so disappointing here is how easy it would have been to make the cover equally appealing to boys and girls - just have the car and the map and you're good to go. They also could have included a dog as a dog does play a prominent role in the story (and everybody loves a dog). The girl makes this pretty much a girl book as does the curly q font for the book's title. A choice was made about who the book's target audience was and even though Peter is just as important as Emma to the story, it's not boys who the publisher was thinking of.

Finally I just received an ARC of Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery: A Reading Memoir and Whoa Nelly is it the perfect freaking cover for this book or what? Lizzie (who I do not know but feel like I should as I've been reading her stuff for so long) writes the Fine Lines column for Jezebel wherein she dissects the many books that we all grew up on and why we can't forget them. From the truly classic (my beloved Wrinkle in Time) to the disasters we couldn't put down (damn Flowers in the Attic) Lizzie has something to say about the books and about all of us who read and loved them (even if we don't know anymore why on earth we ever did love them). I am delighted beyond belief to have this one (and I dare say right at this moment I am gleefully building buzz for its August release!) and so glad the publisher saw that what it needed was a nice cover of girls reading - which is what the book is all about. Expect some thoughts from this one to appear here in the What a Girl Wants series - which returns on Wednesday with answers to question #2. Here's a hint on the subject - a certain girl detective is recalled and the case of her missing genre discussed. (Go ahead admit it - you know you want to talk about her!)

[Copies of Shelf Discovery and You Are Here provided by the publishers all others are titles I do not own.]