Today’s post is sponsored by Holiday House and This Is the Year!
Title This Is The Year
Author Gloria Muñoz
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Publication Date January 7th 2025 by Holiday House
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● Blackwell’s ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
This dazzling YA cli-fi written in prose and verse will speak to any reader struggling with the state of our world and how to understand their place in it.
“In outer space, no one will know me as the girl with the dead sister.”
Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is drowning. She’s grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run, her Florida home is crumbling under the weight of climate disaster, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can stand to stay in a place that doesn’t seem to have room for her.
Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement. Cometa pitches this as an opportunity for Juli to give back to her adopted country; Juli sees it as her only chance to do something big with her life.
Juli begins her training, convinced Cometa is her path to freedom. But her senior year is full of surprises, including new friendships, roller skating, and first love. And through her small but poignant acts of environmentalism, Juli begins to find hope in unexpected places. As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind.
Told in gripping prose interspersed with poems from Juli’s writing journal, this genre-bending novel explores themes of immigration, climate justice, grief, and the power of communities.
Do! Judge A Book By Its Cover is a regular feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which I pay tribute to some of the best and brightest the publishing world has to offer in the way of book cover design.
Book cover design can play an important role in a book’s success or failure. While certainly not the only contributing factor, for the casual reader perusing the shelves of their local library or bookstore, a book’s cover offers one of the earliest introductions to the story contained within its pages and can help differentiate it from the thousands of other titles surrounding it. Book cover design is one of my passions, and given that I spend much of the year celebrating it in its many shapes, forms and iterations in my regular feature, Do! Judge A Book By Its Cover, I thought it might be fun to compose a list of what I thought were some of the most effective, eye-catching and beautiful examples of book cover design in 2024. You can find Pop! Goes The Reader’s Favourite Book Covers Of 2019 here, 2020 here, 2021 here and 2022 here!
Please Note: As always, I’ve done my best to credit the designers and artists responsible for the stunning covers below, but was unable to find this information for a number of those listed. If you know of an uncredited designer and/or artist responsible for any of these book covers or if I’ve credited someone incorrectly, please let me know and I would be happy to include proper attribution in this post. Their work is important and deserves attribution.
The covers below are listed in no particular order.
01. The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington
Cover design by Laura Eckes, Cover art by Cienna Ignacio-Smith
02. My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy
Cover design by Chris Kwon, Cover art by Betsy Cola
03. Thirsty by Jas Hammonds
Cover design by Julia Bianchi, Cover art by Shalida
04. Near Misses & Cowboy Kisses by Katrina Emmel
Cover design by Trisha Previte, Cover art by Alissandra Seelaus
05. Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner
Cover design by Liz Dresner, Cover art by Zoë van Dijk
06. A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
Cover design by Aurora Parlagreco, Cover art by Valentina Remenar
07. Blood At The Root by LaDarrion Williams
Cover design by Liz Dresner, Cover art by Hillary D Wilson
08. Legend Of The White Snake by Sher Lee
Cover design by Joel Tippie, Cover art by Kuri Huang
09. In The Orbit Of You by Ashley Schumacher
Cover design by Kerri Resnick, Cover art by Giuditta Bertoni
10. Not Your Average Jo by Grace K. Shim
Cover design by Kristin Boyle, Cover art by Doejin Lee
11. Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce
Cover design by Casey Moses, Cover art by Liz Parkes
12. All Roads Lead To Rome by Sabrina Fedel
Cover design by Casey Moses, Cover art by Petra Braun
13. The Sticky Note Manifesto of Aisha Agarwal by Ambika Vohra
Cover design by Molly Fehr, Cover art by Molly Fehr
14. I Wish You Would by Eva Des Lauriers
Cover design by Aurora Parlagreco, Cover art by Fevik
15. Bite Me, Royce Taslim by Lauren Ho
Cover design by Zareen Johnson, Cover art by Nicko/NEKOKONUT
16. Four Eids and A Funeral by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé and Adiba Jaigirdar
Cover design by Samira Iravani, Cover art by Ursula Decay
17. Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin
Cover design by Lucia Baez, Cover art by Bex Glendining
18. True Love and Other Impossible Odds by Christina Li
Cover design by Laura Mock, Cover art by Christina Chung
19. These Bodies Between Us by Sarah Van Name
Cover design by Trisha Previte, Cover art by Hokyoung Kim
20. This Night Is Ours by Ronni Davis
Cover design by Gabrielle Chang, Cover art by Andi Porretta
21. Midnights With You by Clare Osongco
Cover design by Marci Senders, Cover art by Dana Lédl
22. Flopping In A Winter Wonderland by Jason June
Cover design by David DeWitt, Cover art by Ricardo Bessa
23. All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi
Cover design by Jenna Stempel-Lobell and Chris Kwon, Cover art by Alexis Franklin
24. Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar
Cover design by Samira Iravani, Cover art by Jani Balakumar
25. Wild About You by Kaitlyn Hill
Cover design by Angela Carlino, Cover art by Ana Hard
26. Song Of The Six Realms by Judy I. Lin
Cover design by Rich Deas, Cover art by Sija Hong
27. This Day Changes Everything by Edward Underhill
Cover design by Myriam Strasbourg, Cover art by Myriam Strasbourg
28. Our Wicked Histories by Amy Goldsmith
Cover design by Liz Dresner, Cover art by Marcela Bolivar
29. Prince of Fortune by Lisa Tirreno
Cover design by Rebecca Syracuse, Cover art by Serena Archetti
30. The Immortal Games by Annaliese Avery
Cover art by Tom Roberts
31. The Atlas Of Us by Kristin Dwyer
Cover design by Corina Lupp, Cover art by Jessica Cruickshank
32. Where The Library Hides by Isabel Ibañez
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino, Cover art by Micaela Alcaino
33. If Anything Happens To Me by Luanne Rice
34. To A Darker Shore by Leanne Schwartz
Cover design by Rosie G. Stewart, Cover art by Flora Kirk
35. The Loss Of The Burying Ground by J. Anderson Coats
Cover design by Martha Kennedy, Cover art by Jeff Langevin
36. Gentlest of Wild Things by Sarah Underwood
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino, Cover art by Micaela Alcaino
37. Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa
Cover design by Samira Iravani, Cover art by Marlowe Lune
38. Ami by S. Jae-Jones
Cover design by Kerri Resnick, Cover art by Sija Hong
39. Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao
Cover design by Terri Nimmo, Cover art by Ashley Mackenzie
40. Adventures of Mary Jane by Hope Jahren
Cover design by Angela Carlino, Cover art by Jill De Haan
