Portia Elan

Battle of the Book Covers: Part ?

| Jessica Crawford

U.S. and U.K. book covers often seem to embrace different aesthetics. Many readers (and book collectors—because as we know, BUYING books and READING books can be two separate hobbies!) tend to have a strong preference for one over the other. Personally, many of the U.K. covers utilize a style that’s a little too…cartoony for my tastes? That might not be the correct term, but they many times look like a novel I would mistake for a Middle Grade book if I had nothing more to go on. I also notice they seem to depict more concrete images of the plot, while many U.S. covers employ a style that more often consists of a design featuring motifs from the story. This is, of course, a generalization and not true in all cases.

But, at least in the internet circles I travel in, I feel as though I may be in the minority in my tastes. I’ve heard many others say they are specifically buying a book from overseas because they prefer the cover.

Here I’ll post comparisons of some of the newer books I have read this year. Images of the U.S. covers are on the left, U.K. on the right. What do you all think?

Book Review: HOMEBOUND by Portia Elan

| Jessica Crawford

Homebound by Portia Elan is a 304 page novel being published by Scribner on May 5, 2026.

Genre

Science Fiction, Cli-Fi

Blurb

Five interlocking lives. One beloved story. A dazzling adventure across centuries and continents in search of the things that hold us together.

It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete—one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness.

Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection—and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.

A novel about our deep interconnectedness, Homebound is a clear-eyed, hopeful adventure into humanity’s future and capacity for love.

Opening Line

I love the way a computer program doesn’t just describe something; it is the thing.

My Thoughts

A young woman grieving the death of her uncle in the 1980s takes up the mantle of completing the video game he left unfinished. 600 years in the future, their joint creation is still impacting lives.

This book felt like a cross between Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin with I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (and maybe just a tad of Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovzky). It’s got video game development, androids, and a bleak future on Earth after climate crises. I appreciated the themes of loneliness versus connection and the power of stories. But I felt similarly about this book as I did those others: there were things I quite liked about all of them, but taken as a whole just weren’t a home run for this reader. I’m not sure if it’s because I failed to feel much of a connection with the characters, or if it was the format that didn’t work for me (two timelines, a gameplay log, and emails). But I do think there will be readers who it’s a perfect fit for, and I think especially anyone who enjoyed the other books mentioned above should consider picking this one up.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.