OK, so the strap line is a direct Jodi Picoult rip-off but apart from that this is a strikingly original cover.

It probably won’t win any awards because it hasn’t used great typography or a quirky illustrative style, but the choice of photograph is brilliant.

Most designers would have gone for the big vista: The open view of a gorgeous beach.

But here we are hemmed in by a balcony, a roofline and most dramatically of all, a ruddy great pillar.

It creates a sense of being trapped and suffocated which one supposes is relevant to the plot.

Our favourite aspect of this approach however, is that the pillar completely disrupts the eye line — it even gets in the way of the title, author name and strap line.

As such this cover is impossible to miss on the shelf — it breaks up the neat line of rectangles that we see when we scan along a row or table of books.

So simple and yet so very effective. We like it a lot.