Shelf Candy #6

 

Shelf Candy is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely ladies at Five Alarm Book Reviews where we do the unthinkable---judge a book by its cover!  

I'm going to be 100% honest (and really, I'm always 100% honest in real life and on my blog), I had a really hard time coming up with a Shelf Candy for this week....until I saw this tweet eeeeeearly Friday morning:

 

and I thought, "Oh my goodness!  I love The Hunger Games!  The covers are so stark and beautiful, just like the books!"  (ok, so thats a little too coherent of a thought for how early it was Friday morning, but that is the gist....it was probably more like, "EEEK!  The same as The Hunger Games!  Yay!"  but the first is much better.)

So, I followed the link, and here is the cover:

 I love it!  Its not as stark as The Hunger Games, but to me, its exactly what a "false prince" is.  The book itself (by Jennifer Nielson) is described as:

In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point -- he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.
As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.
An extraordinary adventure filled with danger and action, lies and deadly truths that will have readers clinging to the edge of their seats.

 The illustrator is Tim O'Brien, and you can find his portfolio and blog/contact information here.  I didn't realize it until I looked on his site, but he is the illustrator of the Time Magazine cover which depicts Bin Ladin with a big red X over his face.  Very powerful stuff.