Eye-Focused Covers in 2014

Written by: Kelly on February 5, 2014.

A couple of years ago, Kimberly talked about a trend she’d noticed on covers. Back in the days of girls in long dresses, she pointed out the single eye trend, where YA covers got just one eye looking out or up or away from the reader. I thought it would be worth pointing out that this trend hasn’t slowed down and it’s possible that the single eye on a cover trend is even stronger in 2014.

Here’s a roundup of YA books featuring an eye on the cover, along with a description from WorldCat. If you know of others, I’d love to know. These are books that are coming out in 2014, and knowing there are still some covers yet to be revealed for the year, I suspect we might see another single eye or two before year’s end. I bet if you pulled all of these books together you could make a real eye-catching display of books (I know, I know).

Some Fine Day by Kat Ross (July): Sixteen-year-old Jansin Nordqvist is on the verge of graduating from the black ops factory known as the Academy. She’s smart and deadly, and knows three things with absolute certainty: 1. When the world flooded and civilization retreated deep underground, there was no one left on the surface. 2. The only species to thrive there are the toads, a primate/amphibian hybrid with a serious mean streak. 3. There’s no place on Earth where you can hide from the hypercanes, continent-sized storms that have raged for decades. Jansin has been lied to. On all counts. (description via Goodreads).

Tabula Rasa by Kristen Lippert-Martin (September): A girl who has been held in an experimental medical facility to remove the memories that gave her post-traumatic stress disorder begins to recover her memory after fleeing mercenaries sent to eliminate her.

Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi (February): With Omega Point destroyed, Juliette doesn’t know if the rebels, her friends, or even Adam are alive. But that won’t keep her from trying to take down The Reestablishment once and for all. Now she must rely on Warner, the handsome commander of Sector 45. The one person she never thought she could trust. The same person who saved her life. He promises to help Juliette master her powers and save their dying world … but that’s not all he wants with her.

Extraction by Stephanie Diaz (July): Clementine has spent her whole life preparing for her sixteenth birthday, when she’ll be tested for Extraction in the hopes of being sent from the planet Kiel’s toxic Surface to the much safer Core, where people live without fear or starvation. When she proves Promising enough to be “Extracted,” she must leave without Logan, the boy she loves. Torn apart from her only sense of family, Clem promises to come back and save him from brutal Surface life. What she finds initially in the Core is a utopia compared to the Surface—it’s free of hard labor, gun-wielding officials, and the moon’s lethal acid. But life is anything but safe, and Clementine learns that the planet’s leaders are planning to exterminate Surface dwellers—and that means Logan, too. Trapped by the steel walls of the underground and the lies that keep her safe, Clementine must find a way to escape and rescue Logan and the rest of the planet. But the planet leaders don’t want her running—they want her subdued. (Description via Goodreads).

Fugitive X by Gregg Rosenblum (available now): s a war between robots and humans looms on the horizon, Nick, Kevin, and Cass continue to battle the bots that enslaved humanity–but when they are separated, they must fight the war on their own.

Gasp by Lisa McMann (June): After narrowly surviving two harrowing tragedies, Jules now fully understands the importance of the visions that she and people around her are experiencing. She’s convinced that if the visions passed from her to Sawyer after she saved him, then they must now have passed from Sawyer to one of the people he saved. That means it’s up to Jules to figure out which of the school shooting survivors is now suffering from visions of another crisis. And once she realizes who it is, she has to convince that survivor that this isn’t all crazy—that the images are of something real. Something imminent. As the danger escalates more than ever before in the conclusion to the Visions series, Jules wonders if she’ll finally find out why and how this is happening—before it’s too late to prevent disaster. (Description via Goodreads).

I Have A Bad Feeling About This by Jeff Strand (March): A Hunger Games-style survival school for teens is about to get deadly serious… or seriously deadly. Take your pick. Henry Lambert is a skinny, completely non-athletic sixteen-year-old who would much rather stay inside playing video games than do anything that requires interacting with nature.