I remember getting this email like it was yesterday. I was sitting in my apartment in Boston. We were a year away from the release of Meant to Be, my debut novel. And then there it was … all the cover options the brilliant and talented Heather Daugherty had created. The first one they showed me was the one that ended up being the brilliant and beautiful cover of Meant to Be (which I still get compliments on to this day), but there were other contenders. And they were fantastic. But don’t just take my word for it, take a look!

(I won’t lie, the one above was, and still is, my favorite. But this was 2012, and more graphic covers just weren’t on-trend)

Like I said, they knew already that this one was their favorite, and Barnes & Noble had approved it already too. This was the first version of what became the cover that I saw…

You can see that the colors are a little bit different, but on the whole, it was very close. That’s not to say we didn’t try a few things with it first. We were a little worried that maybe the dude looked too old or too formal to be Jason, so Heather had some fun with photoshop.

But yeah, that didn’t quite do it. So we went back, and in the end, this was the final cover. We went lighter on all the colors, and I have to say, OH MY GOD is it good. Guess this one was, well, meant to be (hey-oh!)

True story: when I first shared this cover online, I got a comment from a woman. Not sure how she stumbled across it, but she wanted to tell me that that was her son in the photo! It came from a stock photo shoot that was meant to be (and are you ready for this?) EDWARD AND BELLA! They actually found their way to another book cover …