It always gets me: that compelling sentence in a book’s description that catches my eye and forces me to read through the rest of the blurb, when all I’d meant to do was add it to a customer’s rental pool. I’m talking about the sales copy, the short book description written with action verbs and the same melodramatic, slightly inaccurate terms used to sell hair growth medication, diet pills, and $14,000 exercise machines.
Here are some of my favorite examples of riveting, exciting, man-I-gotta-read-that-book yet surprisingly generic blurbs. Can you match each compelling blurb with its book?
1) The killer has the whole city by its strings–and he’ll stop at nothing to become the most terrifying star that Washington D.C. has ever seen.
2) With this life-affirming tale of friendship and fate, [author] once again shows why she is a nationally bestselling author with legions of loyal fans.
3) But there are some lines that should never be crossed—like the one [character]’s stepping over . . . again!
4) A story of depth and emotion, hilarity and imagination, [title] tells a story of love, family, and loss.
5) But when a chance encounter brings them together again, the time has finally come to make a choice, one that will have profound consequences for them both for the rest of their lives.
a) The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
b) Double Cross by James Patterson
c) Lone Eagle by Danielle Steel
d) The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison
e) Second Chance by Jane Green
