A Trend That Needs to Stop

I like book covers, it's like a little slice of the story made into a good visual. I am particularly in love with the Italian edition of Moira Young's Blood Red Road. If I could have this as a poster hanging in my bedroom, I would.

But there is a trend in book covers, YA books in particular that needs to stop.

I am talking about the Half of a Face cover (which I will now acronym into HOAF, which sounds like a sound effect for being punched in the stomach.)

I'm not talking about a whole face, either. There are lots of whole faces on book covers, and those, with a few exceptions, are rather uninspired, but the Half of a Face is definitely a theme I'm getting pretty sick of. Maybe all of our super-gorgeous models these days are disciples of some secret order of Harvey Dent we don't know about? Don't know what I'm talking about? Let me show you some examples of covers just from going through the books on my shelf. We have...

Uglies, by Scott Westerfield:

This the older (and way less creepy) cover. It technically wraps around the book, where there is a whole face, although if they had made the whole face the cover I think it would have looked much better.

The whole series is at fault for following the HOAF theme, actually.

If there's an odd number of eyeballs on your covers, something is wrong.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan:

I actually like this cover, but it kind of distracts me that the girl would be wearing eyeliner during a zombie apocalypse. Now, it's believable that a girl would wear some during a recent outbreak, but to give you a time frame for how long zombies have been roaming, the quest of the main character is to find the ocean, which no one in her village thinks is real. It would have to be several generations into the zombie apocalypse, eyeliner being the least of people's problems.

Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead:

Mostly it's the first one, and I definitely prefer these covers over the new ones, which are faded out versions of these with a giant VA slapped over the top of them...except for the 6th, which is further zoomed in to create the HOAF look.

Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce:

Tamora Pierce is a prominent author of my childhood and none of her other books have HOAF as far as I'm aware of.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver:

(Pic refused to work right, so I removed it.)

What is it with girls hiding in the woods? First Uglies, then Forest of Hands and Teeth, now Delirium? I picked this book up about a week ago at a thrift store for a buck, and is the only one listed here I haven't read yet. It sounded dystopian, which drew my interest since the second book has been out, but it also sounds romancey, which made me cringe. It's another of those books that makes me afraid to read it because I've been disappointed so many times since the Twilight craze started.

For comparison, here's the cover's whole face:

I'm not the only person who's noticed this (thank heavens, I'm not crazy) as this gal has pointed out this trend, as well as many more.