Friday Face-Off: Footsteps
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“Trip trap, trip trap, trip trap”
~ a cover featuring FOOTSTEPS
Mogsy’s Pick:
The White Road by Sarah Lotz
The White Road takes place in the winter of 2006, at a time when YouTube stars and listicles are just starting to become a thing. Our protagonist Simon Newman and his roommate are a couple of slackers looking to grow their clickbait website, and the idea for their big break comes when they learn of the Cwm Pot caves in Wales where several years ago a group of spelunkers had gotten trapped and died. Simon gets the crazy idea to go down there and come back with never-seen-before footage of the dead bodies, which would be perfect material for their morbid audience.
Unfortunately, that venture ultimately ended in a media disaster, though it did nothing to deter Simon from taking his website’s new found attention to the next level. After descending into the depths of the earth in search of corpses, why not go the other extreme this time around, and do the same thing on the highest point on earth? Mount Everest is said to be the final resting place of more than 200 people, and their remains are often unrecoverable and left where they fell, sometimes for years and years. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard for Simon to go up there and capture more footage of a couple of dead bodies, which would undoubtedly bring even more traffic to their website?
Dumb idea, Simon. Just really, really stupid.
But thankfully, we’re not here to talk about the poor life choices of our protagonists, we’re here to talk about covers! So let’s take a look at them now:
From left to right:
Hodder & Stoughton (2017) – Mulholland Books (2017) – Russian Edition (2017)
Winner:
Slim pickings this week, unfortunately. The choice was easy, as both the Hodder and Russian editions are way too dark for my liking (I really hate that “underexposed photo” look), so while I’m not particularly impressed by any of the offerings this week, the Mulholland cover pretty much wins by default.
But what do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
Hmm, interesting synopsis! I love it when a cover post gets me interested in a book lol. Anyway, I like the first cover the best, it looks mysterious with the footprints, but I like the second one too.
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Haha, I’m glad the summary caught your attention, because the covers for the book are kinda boring, doesn’t do the story justice!
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First one, but they are all rather dull thriller cliche
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Totally agreed. I’m not in love with any of them.
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Why didn’t I think of this – I knew I’d seen a recent cover with footsteps but could I find it! Brilliant choice and it totally has to be the middle cover.
Lynn 😀
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I was lucky I stumbled upon the footsteps cover – before this, I was only familiar with the US “mountain” cover!
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I definitely love the Mulholland cover the best. I think we’ll see quite a few snowy footsteps today (including mine!)
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Yep, I went straight to my “snow” books to see if I would be lucky enough to spot footsteps in any of the covers! Sure enough… 🙂
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I actually like the Hodder version the best, but that’s coming from someone who has never heard of this book. I like the Mulholland one as well, but why did they have to put A NOVEL in tiny print on the side of the mountain?
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Haha, the “A Novel” tag on books always cracks me up. Especially when it is clear to everyone that it is a novel. Like, why?!
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Yes I agree with you…the mountain view is better!
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It’s more impressive, showing Everest in all its glory!
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The two dark covers do have something going for them, though, because – from my point of view – they spell “horror” and “disaster” in a quite loud voice… 🙂
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I can see that! There is definitely an element of horror to this one, so the darker covers fit!
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I didn’t know about this one and well the covers aren’t that awesome either but I would chosse the same one
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Yeah, I was not impressed with any of the covers this week. I chose the one I disliked least 😛
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Its a close call between the first two, but I agree with your pick 🙂
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Yeah, I wasn’t crazy with any of the choices this week, but the mountain is impressive at least!
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Definitely the middle one even if it doesn’t have any footsteps. 😀
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Haha, nope, no footsteps. But it’s Everest, so that earns it some points 😀
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Hodder & Stoughton for me, but it was a close race with your pick! 😀
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The H&S does have an ominous feel to it that fits the mood of the book perfectly!
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