feel free to post your own responses/entries, but one that recently caught my eye:

Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo

Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

* identical covers (click on the links), right down to the blonde girl wearing a pink dress bareback riding a tiger!

THAT is just too weird.

I don't think the covers look alike at all.  Too many differences. Closer view in the 2nd one, the 2nd one has the girl's hair blowing in the wind. There are other differences. The only similarity is a girl on a tiger.

Anything by Charlain Harris makes me scratch my head.  I don't get the appeal of those "Sookie" novels at all.  

I almost hate to say it, because so many people like them, but I did not get the Dragons in our Midst series at all. The first two books were great, but the third was kind of weird and by the time you get to the Oracles of Fire sequal series, not only is is weird, but it doesn't make any sense. The plot is really complicated, which isn't normally a bad thing, except that this particular series has about five storylines going at the same time, each set in a compleatly separate universe with compleatly differant main characters and rules for the universe, and none of the plots have any apparant connection to each other or internal logic of their own (as in why finding this random object is important or how any of the dimentional portals the characters are constantly blundering through work)

I was thinking of giving up on it for a while, but the last straw was when in the fith book, we randomly left all the characters that I at least sort of cared about to relate the long, confusing, and rather boring five-thousand year backstory of someone we've never even met before. This backstory takes up an entire three-hundred plus page book. That made me scratch my head.

(sorry about the spelling, spell check isn't working today)

Acclaimed or not... Bastard Out of Carolina still gives me nightmares some eleven years later...   

If you really want to see similar (or identical except for photoshopping) artwork, check out this goodreads list for Cover Couples.

Melanti, that is a really interesting link.  I really did find it surprising, though I guess I shouldn't have.

Edgar Sawtelle. One of the most beautiful books I have ever read and then you get to the end and.... what?! That's it?! I found it puzzling and a little irritating.

Carla, I totally agree about Bastard Out of Carolina. I was so pissed at the mother and stepfather by the end of the book that I literally threw the book across the room. That poor little girl.

Pam

Just finished Bastard Out of Carolina last week, and totally agree with you; I could have SCREAMED at the ending.  Left me scratching my head at why an author would end the book this way. 

The Cover Couples list doesn't surprise me, but if I was the author, oooooh, would I be pissed! I can just imagine going into a bookstore to show my friends or family my book on the shelf... only to lead to an awkward hey-wait-that's-not-my-book moment.  

To those who have remarked on Bastard.  This is actually a fictionalized autobiographical account of the authors childhood.  I have a feeling the ending was true to life.  Which makes it all the more worse...............

I didn't read the entire cover couples list, but here's one I've noticed for myself:

The Night I Disappeared
Author: Julie Reece Deaver 

and       

Escape from Memory
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix

"The Bastard....SC" book was indeed largely autobiographical. It was horrible, but it was true, and beautifully written.

Keep in mind that book is pretty old; she has since written other books about her life later.