I really enjoyed Are U 4 Real? by Sara Kadefors. Sara lives in Stockholm, Sweden, where this book was an award-winning bestseller. To be honest, I thought the meeting-online premise sounded a little stale (it came out in Sweden in 2001, and just this year in the US), but the story really drew me in. It's about Kyla, a beautiful and popular LA socialite with an absent father and a deeply depressed mother, and Alex, a shy ballet dancer from outside San Francisco who tries to avoid bullies and has trouble talking to girls. They meet in a chat room and share their deepest feelings of isolation. It was a really sweet and romantic read with genuine angst and realistic situations, I thought.Anyway, I'm rambling. Here's Sara, talking about the US cover and the Swedish cover:
"The only thing I thought about my cover was that I wanted it to be modern. The first cover was something new in Sweden (right), it looked almost like a comic with a young girl throwing a glass with something inside. All books for young people had foggy faces on the cover at that time. The cover on the American version of the book is simple and nice, and not childish at all, which I like.
"The American publisher didn't ask me, which was okay, because I don't know anything about how books look like in USA. But I was very much involved with the Swedish creator.
"I didn't make any changes. I think my job is to write the book. And as for the cover, I like it. At first I thought it was a bit boring. But I liked it more and more because of its simplicity."
This seems like it would be a tough cover to design. I'm not sure how I feel about it, honestly. I think it's growing on me. The two covers are so different though! What do you guys think?
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