Here’s an interesting double take. Both of the books are dystopias, and their covers are very, very similar to each other.The first book is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go is a dystopia for adults, a book I read for an undergraduate class and fell in love with. It’s set in the 90s in an English school called Hailsham, but of course, the school isn’t your normal school, and the students have a purpose very different from learning writing and math. I think the cover is spectacular. It’s a close-up of a young woman’s face, her eyes gazing somewhere in the distance. While the book was marketed to adults, it’s a book young adults would also enjoy, and it won an Alex award in 2006.

The second book is The Unidentified by Rae Mariz, a dystopia for teens to be published in October. (Apologies for the size, I couldn’t find a larger photo.) This book is also set in a school that is more than what it seems. Despite this parallel with Never Let Me Go and the book’s eerily similar cover, The Unidentified seems to much more closely resemble MT Anderson’s Feed, so much so that I couldn’t help but compare Mariz’s book with Anderson’s as I read the first two chapters of The Unidentified. (Judging from the first two chapters that I have read, I have a feeling Feed will win this battle handily.)

There are probably other covers out there that resemble these two. Do you know of any? Which of the two covers above is more effective? I have not yet finished The Unidentified, but I like the cover for Never Let Me Go better. Despite the flat affect apparent on the woman’s face (which is integral to the book), her eyes are focused on something in the distance and seem to indicate some emotion or depth. The eyes of the cover model are clearly intended to be the focal point for the reader. The cover model’s eyes in The Unidentified are partially obscured by the title text and it’s more distracting than it is arresting. Still, the cover is what led me to pick the book up.