Book Discussion: Strangely Similar Covers

One reading prompt I had during one of last year's challenges was "Two book that look alike." This, I presumed, was open to interpretation, and these are the ones I came up with:

Notice the red doors and the Christmas wreaths, and snow falling. The most noticeable differences are the garlands, sled and dog in the first cover.

There seem to be various themes used as book cover designs that give lookalike covers. 

Profile Silhouette:

Nearly all the silhouettes in these examples seem the same. Many are curly-haired women. Note that two different books by the same author (Chris Cleave) use this design, and that each one has the silhouette looking in opposite directions. 

Apples:

Can we blame Twilight for this cover trend? I was looking at my library recently and saw this book, using an apple core as a statue of a person. That is an interesting idea.

 

Swirl Designs:

This has many possibilities. No two swirls seem exactly the same, but the designs are still very similar. There may be other such covers that that his photo missed.  Here is one I read about a year ago.

Glasses:

Why does it seem to be only girls wearing glasses on covers?  I happened to read the book The Black Kids last summer, not too long after I'd read these two books, both not shown above. 

Note how many of these kinds of covers often show images pictures in the frames of the glasses, and some use the glasses to display the book title.

And I can't believe they didn't show this cover:

 

Shoes:

Just what is the rhyme or reason for these covers having shoes? Do any of these books have much, if anything at all, to do with shoes? And this one I read earlier this year. Why is there a boot on this? At least I was able to use that one for the prompt "show on the cover" that I encountered this year.

Matches:

This blog post pointed out the similarity of the two covers below and wondered if "...Fahrenheit 451 is an important influence in Augusten Burrough’s (sic) memoir, Lust & Wonder. ..."

The above images and names for covers are just a few examples from this Twitter/X post. Click to see other types of cover designs. Far too many to mention here. 

Animated Covers:

This seems to be common on romance novels these days. Why is this so, this article asks. Even more eerie are those covers without faces. Often the face is not depicted at all, even though the characters are facing forward or to the side, as seen below: 

Or the face is entirely hidden behind an object:

And there are probably more examples of each cover design. And other cover tropes I did not get to mention (See the aforementioned Twitter/X link post for some). Any you have noticed?

Posted to Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts at Midnight.