More of the Best Book Covers of 2025 So Far

The three main colors on this cover should not complement one another, but that jarring use of dark blue/purple with the bright orange of the title and pink of the authors name work. But the real stars here are all of the summoning goods at the center that are made to look hyperreal with their bold colors.

In many ways, despite looking quite different, this cover reminds me of the vibe of Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks. It’s fun and it captures the book’s tone well.

The title font here is something I can’t recall having seen on a book cover before, and it gives a bit of a vintage flair, which carries through in the color scheme more broadly. The fat letters and circles for the counters (i.e., the space inside the B, A, D, and Rs) adds a unique weight to the cover that’s nicely paired with the dark red in the lower half of the design.

For a cover that doesn’t have a whole lot going on in terms of imagery, there is a lot of movement in it. When you look at the top of the flower–the part above the red and leaning into the “U” in the title–you can feel the breeze blowing.

For a thriller about a classical musician forced into witness protection, the central image here tells nearly the whole story in a simple but evocative way. The color scheme here works well, as does the movement in the lines separating the blue bottom half of the cover and yellow top half of the color.

The design here has an old school feel to it. It’s quite reminiscent of the hardcover design of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. This is likely intentional, since the two books would make pretty good read alikes.

Compare the cover for Endling with that of The Dark Maestro above. The covers are not anywhere near the same, and yet both utilize (and bastardize!) the rule of thirds, breaking the design into three distinct and eye pleasing pieces. Both make the three pieces energetic, though where Maestro does so with smooth lines, Endling goes with rougher ones.

What’s so striking about Endling isn’t just the brilliant red. It’s not just the stripes depicting both sand and movement. It’s the careful juxtaposition of the natural world in all of its sharp edges with the smoothness of the man-made recreational vehicle. The thinly-weighted font for both the title and author name are nicely done, too, allowing the reader enough information to know what they are but they don’t impede on the design itself. If they’d been straight, rather than with a little curve to them, the impact may have been distrcting.

I’ve waited for months and months to share this cover in a best of roundup. It is easily one of the best book covers I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s because it’s unique–this is a photograph, rather than a graphic or piece of art–and it is a little absurd. Who has not thought about running a red comb through a plate of restaurant spaghetti?

The title and author font, alongside the white starburst used for a blurb, is perfectly befitting an Italian restaurant that would use the kind of red checkered tablecloth in the background.

There’s a very similar structure in Misophonia‘s design when you compare it to Bad Nature, and yet the two covers could not feel nor convey their stories more differently. There is a lot of color going on with this cover, and that busy feel helps readers feel the MOOD of the young person in the center of the image. You don’t need to ask them if they’re happy or angry. You know the answer is going to be that it is none of your damn business.

The neons, the explosions, the stark black headphones against it all: just perfect. Talk about conveying misophonia.

There are not a lot of book covers that make use of a collage style, whether or not they’re truly a collage. That’s part of what makes Old School Indian feel so fresh and so different. We have an incredible array of colors and movement here, from the background, to the orange hanging out behind the “D” in the title (it looks like it’s falling or floating), and the reverse color scheme along the person’s cheeks and chin giving.

Where Bad Nature went with circles for its counters in the title font, note that there simply are not any counters in this one. It works so well, given the collage style. (This is a great cover for folks just learning about or thinking about design’s “rule of thirds” to see where and how it works here–that collage style of foregrounding some things and backgrounding others makes this an excellent example). Bonus: this cover and the lines of the sky draw the eye the way it naturally wants to move across an image by bringing attention from top to bottom in a bit of a reverse 6 motion.

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Weirdly, this isn’t going to be the only solo image of a couch to make a best covers of 2025 roundup this year. The next one will come later on, but remember this as the one that was very purple.

You know already that this is playing with thirds. You also likely see the same elements that make My Documents work are happening here too–this time, it’s a bright blue river that’s slightly off center. The use of yellow for the title and author are great, but more noteworthy is that the styling is all lowercase. The emphasis being “small.”

The tiger on the left, whose rear body is all that’s visible, offers something that makes this cover just different enough and invites intrigue.

A hole in the eye for the title? The smarmy look on the face of what is likely the entitled main character from the book? The elements work and do something different than a cover that would simply have this face on it. The space it takes up relative to the cover is also visually arresting.

In some ways, where the title is can be confusing, especially since you see “a novel” at the top corner, followed by the author. But that decision to put the title in an unconventional place really does make you pay attention.