These days, I expect fire and fury when I look at the news, but imagine my surprise when I was assigning reviews yesterday and unwittingly sorted these four books into the same pile:



An instance of art imitating life? Perhaps. But also perhaps a new cover trend? In particular, the covers for Watch You Burn and How We Learned to Lie are eerily similar visually, while the combo of fire and death in the other two covers is no less foreboding.

While dark books don’t usually appeal to me in my own reading habits, perhaps the news has seeped into my subconscious enough that I am, as are these book designers, drawn to more doom and gloom right now.

What do you think? Is fire on the cover of thrillers a trend you’ve seen elsewhere? What other book cover trends have you noticed recently? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.