By Its Cover

Any day is a good day to recommend the work of one of my absolute favorite authors, but St. Patrick's Day is an especially good day, given she's Irish. Tana French has a new book dropping on the 31st of this month, and I will most definitely be setting aside all my other reads to attend to it. 

We've all heard "don't judge a book by its cover" before. In the case of my books, it's always meant to imply (or is outright stated) that my covers are lousy and the reader was surprised by their enjoyment of my work. The truth, whether we like it or not, is that covers do matter, which is precisely why I select covers for my work in a very purposeful way. Nine times out of ten, those head-turning, gorgeous book covers frame trite and underwhelming prose. I choose covers for my books that would attract readers like me: covers that make you go "huh, wonder what that's about."

That's what happened when I discovered Tana French for the first time.

I was perusing the aisles of a Borders bookstore, long before Bookstagram and Book Tok wrested control of the book marketing world and started splashing viral book sensations across all of our phone screens. The first novel of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series was not featured on an endcap display, nor laid out on a table; it was slotted alphabetically alongside the other mystery novels, easy to miss - and I sometimes shake my head in wonder when I think of missing it - and it was the title that first caught my attention. In the Woods. Simple. Vague in a delightful way. The woods can be so many things: a sun-dappled clearing where a doe sips from a burbling stream; a cozy glen where smoke curls from the stone chimney of a cabin; or it can be a sinister place of crowded tree trunks and shifting shadows. Snapping twigs, hooting owls, rustling underbrush. 

I pulled the book out to catch a peek at the cover. 

Have you ever stood amidst a patch of trees in the winter, tilted your head back, and looked up? I have always found a melancholic enjoyment in the silhouettes of bare tree branches stamped against a white January sky. On the cover of In the Woods, the bare branch aesthetic was subtly foreboding. This, I knew, was no cozy cabin story. 

I turned to the first page, and within two paragraphs knew that no matter the outcome of the plot, Tana French's writing was exquisite. Some fifteen years later, she's still my most-recommended author. Given she's a New York Times bestseller, and far more successful than I'll ever be, I still feel that she's a vastly underappreciated author. I don't see her mentioned on the thriller rec accounts, and rarely encounter a fellow fan in the wild. 

She only puts out one book every two years (don't ever come at me about how slowly I write again, y'all), but the wait is always more than worth it. She writes rich, lyrical literary mysteries full of the most complex, flawed, loveable characters. She tends to take side characters from previous novels and bring them into the spotlight, and manages to shift your opinion of them one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees from one POV to another. 

Happy St. Paddy's Day! Let me know if you give Ms. French's work a try.