*eyeballs popular media*

[highlyeccentric]

Is it just me, or has someone among the publishing deities decided that 'The [insert oddly specific number] [life events] of [firstname lastime]' is The Way To Sell Books at the moment?

Apparently you also get points if the name is Evelyn. Easy mode is just 'The [things] of [firstname lastname]', blending out to 'The [singular thing] of [firstname lastname]'.

Related phenomena: 'Firstname Lastname is ____' or possibly, 'is not ____', or 'does _____'. The latter naming pattern is a lot more diffuse over time (eg: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), but it seems like Firstname Lastname is particularly In Right Now, especially for women leads.

Comments

[darjeeling]

... I hadn't noticed it until you mentioned it, but now I can't unsee. :|

[alexseanchai]

I mean [Firstname Lastname] and the [Adjective Noun | Noun of Noun] is demonstrably a winner. Rowling proved that!

[highlyeccentric]

True, but that one's a lot older and a staple in children's books (Tom Brown's schooldays, Nancy Drew and the Insert Plot Here, etc).

[libbi]

There's also a lot of "The Girl [preposition]" or "the woman". Possibly because of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", but really, can we stop calling women, girls?

[highlyeccentric]

Yeeaaah. That one peaked shortly after Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and is having a slow tail-off, I think. The Oddly Specific Number of Life Events of Firstname Lastname seems to be new (and I think Evelyn Hugo and Evelyn Hardcastle must have been accidental overlaps, not one styled after the other - they both came out this year)

[meneltarma]

Firstname Lastname is/is not _____ is a very YA-edging-into-Romance publishing thing and frequently used to queer-code OR signal the book is about non-white people. Presumably because "Depra Patel Is Not Your Girlfriend" or "Janet Grimm Does Not Go Into The Woods" immediately tells you a lot of things about the type of protagonist or setting you'll be reading about in a way which the very poetic flowery titles a lot of POC-centered or queer-centric titles of yore absolutely in no way conveyed through marketing.