For the longest time, I’ve been hinting that I saw a peek of the cover for my upcoming YA novel Imaginary Girls and that I was madly in love with it.

I may have admitted to getting teary-eyed when the jacket image first arrived in my e-mail inbox, simply because it far exceeded my wildest expectations. (I also leaped out of the chair and jumped up and down and ran to the bedroom and freaked out and cried in joy and maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone that for fear of embarrassing myself, but I just told the world, oh well!)

I am going to stop hinting. That’s right.

Today is the day I show you the jacket image that made me cry.

So, without further stalling, here it is.

THE COVER:

Cover photograph by Elena Kalis
Art direction & design by Linda McCarthy

Now… do you want to know what the book is about? Here’s the book summary that will run on the ARCs (advance reader’s copies):

About Imaginary Girls (YA | Dutton | forthcoming June 14, 2011):

Ruby said I’d never drown—not in deep ocean, not by shipwreck, not even by falling drunk into someone’s bottomless backyard pool. . . . It sounded impossible, something no one would believe if anyone other than Ruby were the one to tell it. But Ruby was right: The body found that night wouldn’t be, couldn’t be mine.

Chloe’s older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can’t be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby’s friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns home two years later, a precarious and deadly balance waits. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

Imaginary Girls is a masterfully distorted vision of family reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, laced with twists that beg for their secrets to be kept.

* * *

I was going to tell you all the reasons why I love this jacket image—like maybe how I feel it so perfectly captures the mood of the book; how, if I saw this across a bookstore, I’d run over to go see what it was—but you know what? I think you have a good idea of how much I love it.

(Thank you so much for this cover, Julie.)

So… what do you think of the cover for Imaginary Girls? I hope it makes you want to read the book!