Covers matter, except when they don't: Cover reveal of Deep Betrayal by Anne Greenwood Brown.

I've been doing a lot of Deep Thinking this week. I wrote a very personal blog post on mental illness in YA, and started sketching out ideas for three or four more essays on topics that are important to me for this blog. A few of those essays involve covers.

This is not one of those essays.

In fact, it's more of a gut reaction than anything else. An ooooh, pretty, not what does this mean really? Scroll down. Form opinions. I'll be waiting.

It's the cover to Anne Greenwood Brown's forthcoming book Deep Betrayal, the sequel to Lies Beneath, which you might remember me reviewing positively a couple weeks ago. Anne just posted the cover in a reveal on her site, which also included an excerpt from Lily's point of view, which I will also share, because hey, I'm excited for this book too:

 For a moment all we did was stare. His green eyes brooding, yet as frightened as my own. His wet hair hanging in dark, twisted ropes against his olive-tanned face. His soaking wet board shorts pressing against my thighs. The hull closed in on us from all sides, and the small confines amplified my senses. Even the silence bounced around, echoing in my ears. The smell of patchouli hung heavy in the air. Heat licked up at us from the sand, and his breath was hot against my face.
     “Look at you,” he said, and his voice was disappointed.

You can also find the summary from Goodreads here:

It's been thirty days, two hours, and seventeen minutes since Calder left Lily standing on the shores of Lake Superior. Not that she's counting. And when Calder does return, it's not quite the reunion Lily hoped for. Especially after she lets her father in on a huge secret: he, like Calder, is a merman. Obsessed with his new identity, Lily's dad monopolizes Calder's time as the two of them spend every day in the water, leaving Lily behind.
Then dead bodies start washing ashore. Calder blames his mermaid sisters, but Lily fears her father has embraced the merman's natural need to kill. As the body count grows, everyone is pointing fingers. Lily doesn't know what to believe—only that whoever's responsible is sure to strike again. . . 

What I'm basically trying to say is this: this cover should set off all my buttons. It's a dead-looking white girl in a pretty dress underwater. Not exactly incendiary cover design. But you know what? I really don't give two craps. I think it's very pretty and I think it suits the book nicely, offer a hearty pat on the back to the publishing house (which is Delacorte, by the way), and an even heartier congratulations to the author for winning the very tricky cover lottery. Good vibes all around.

See, writers of hate mail? I'm not bitchy all the time. Sometimes I am all warm and fuzzy and pleased by a pretty cover, too. Discuss.