I ran across this double-take while browsing Goodreads the other day. On the left is Loose Girl, a memoir by Kerry Cohen chronicling her years as a promiscuous young woman – using sex as a stand-in for attention, love, and intimacy – and her ensuing recovery. On the right is Kirsty Eagar’s YA novel Raw Blue, a book about a surfer girl who experienced something terrible in college, dropped out, and must confront it a couple of years later.

While I have read neither, I’m struck by the parallels between the two books, represented by the girl on the covers. Both books seem to deal somewhat strongly in feelings of shame and regret, and the girl shows this – her downward look, her hair obscuring most of her face, her passive expression. I don’t think either of the two covers are particularly striking, but the girl does communicate a certain tone.

It also seems like the model’s shirt has been edited to be a little less revealing in the Eagar title, which is interesting to me.