Continuing my promise made a few months ago that for the rest of the year I’d only buy second-hand or remaindered books, with purchases based mainly on their covers rather than previous knowledge of the author etc, I picked up a copy of Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells last weekend. The version I picked up has the UK cover, as Australia tends to have these rather than the American covers:

It’s definitely a beautiful cover.  Eye-catching, with some cute brushes and a witchy font (an element that’s continued in the headers but doesn’t work as well within the book).  And it worked, because I picked up this book having never heard of the author or her work.  I whizzed through the book, which is a light, sweet urban fantasy. Having finished it, though, I’m not sure how well the UK cover actually represents the content of the book. I feel as though I was a little misled, as though I’d bought a chocolate bar based on its wrapping, but when I’d opened it up, it had turned out to be an entirely different (although equally edible, and definitely now all gone) chocolate bar.

I googled the author to check out her forthcoming stuff (a novel about chocolate–fine by me!), and whilst I was on her website, had a look at the alternative covers for Garden Spells. The UK and US hardcovers are below (the US one is, of course, the one with a person on it):

Again, I do love the UK cover (which reminds me of Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu), but the US cover is more representative of what’s between the covers (the book isn’t, after all, about a haunted dress).

And just for good measure, below are copies of the German, Dutch, and Polish covers:

The Dutch and German covers create quite an expectation of literariness (although I must admit to general ignorance of cover design norms in these countries), and skip over the whole fantasy aspect, whereas the Polish one seems to bring this out along with the main character’s quiet, moody strength.