YA Lookalikes: Big Face.

I've heard this cover treatment disparagingly referred to as BIG FACE, which is a fair description and an apt name. And I think it's fair to say that said covers don't really tell the browser ANYTHING about the book.

However! That doesn't mean they aren't worth reading.

I was a HUGE fan of Robin Wasserman's The Book of Blood and Shadow:

There's murder and tragedy, betrayal and first love, alchemy and secret societies and religion and conspiracy and danger and on and on and on. All that, and it's imbued with a love of knowledge, curiosity, history, and truth. Nora's voice is immediately compelling, Elizabeth's letters are pitch-perfect and heartbreaking, and Robin Wasserman's writing is fabulously fabulous. Nora's connection to the long-dead Elizabeth Weston works on an intellectual level, an emotional level, and a personal level—it's so strong that as the book goes on, it starts to feel like a two-way connection.

And I'm so interested in Anne Blankman's A Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke—about a girl who was once a trusted ally of Adolf Hitler but eventually fled Germany and is now living in England... but has to return home when her journalist boyfriend is accused of murder—that I just put an ILL request in for the first book in the series, Prisoner of Night and Fog.

Previously: YA Pair: Dad's a Latin teacher.