One day I had lunch with a bestselling author and, thinking to break the ice, said, "I saw that you blurbed so-and-so's latest book. I love him, too!" The ice got thicker as she said she had no idea who I was talking about--she doesn't write her blurbs. She has "people" to do that. I recalled that as I was looking over publishers' catalogues for fall books and came across some seriously odd blurbs for new books, like "Once in a lifetime, a writer puts it all together," said of a co-authored book; and a Fifty Shades of Gray wannabe described as cute and charming. Or "For fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and the Twilight series." Throw in Dan Brown for a stunning Venn diagram.
I'm a passionate Jack Reacher fan, and an even more passionate Spenser fan; when I read "Jack Reacher is much more the heir to the Op and Marlowe than Spenser ever was," I must protest. That is sacrilege, worse than casting Tom Cruise as Reacher. Spenser is The Heir.
Bruce Jacobs, one of our reviewers, sent this: "Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk is a North Dallas Forty for our times." Jacobs noted, "Other than both being set in Cowboy stadium, Fountain's rather incredible and intoxicating send-up of war and the 'American way of life' has little in common with Gent's book and very little to do with football."
Another reviewer, Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, made up an excellent blurb: "Grownups who loved Little Red Riding Hood when they were young won't be able to resist Tana French's Into the Woods."
On the other hand, when you see a blurb that actually tells you something--"Gangsters, a silent but heroic drifter with second sight, and a whopper of a Florida hurricane. How can you go wrong?" Stephen King on Michael Koryta's The Cypress House--well, that's something that you can walk into a bookstore with.
Share your favorites with us, or create your own. --Marilyn Dahl, reviews editor, Shelf Awareness