Kate R’s comment that Edith Layton writes some good stories, though she is plagued by bad cover art, gave me an idea – what books and/or authors do you recommend as great stories, despite being afflicted with horrible cover art? Good books, with bad covers, please! List ‘em up!
(Note: I edited this post at 2.25pm EDT for clarity, as my original wording was not clear, largely due to absence of caffeine in my bloodstream -SBS)
Julia Quinn’s “The Duke and I” … ok, the front cover is fine. It’s a bit minimalist, with flowers and a placecard? Invitation? It works for the book.
But turn to the back cover, and you get this nightmare:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-images/0380800829/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0/002-0654894-6507212?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books&index=0#gallery
You’ve got the male cover model with mantitty, uneven washboard abs, and a lack of proportion not seen since “The Incredible Hulk.” Hello. Top-heavy much?
Then the woman is wearing a gown in a shade of pink only found on top of a lox & bagel sandwich. And… style? Is it the offspring of a US Civil War era southern bell dress and a Mexican peasant dress? Lets not even mention how it seems to be about to fall off her impossibly long torso.
Violet Bridgerton would never let her daughter out of the house in that.
Hands down the winner is Hope’s Captive by Kate Lyon. Seriously. The hero is a WHITE army major and the cover model is wearing buckskin for cripes sake. Also, he has bigger titties than the female cover model does.
Great, great book. Gave me a small glimmer of hope that the historical romance genre hasn’t gone to hell….
Julia Quinn’s “The Duke and I†… ok, the front cover is fine. It’s a bit minimalist, with flowers and a placecard? Invitation? It works for the book.
But turn to the back cover, and you get this nightmare:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-images/0380800829/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0/002-0654894-6507212?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books&index=0#gallery
You’ve got the male cover model with mantitty, uneven washboard abs, and a lack of proportion not seen since “The Incredible Hulk.†Hello. Top-heavy much?
And, WTF, his left man-titty is completely missing! I agree with this being a great book. I loved it, too.
Sorry, I thought Karen’s comments would be automatically put in quotes. My comments are only the bottom paragraph.
Robin Schone’s first cover on A Lady’s Tutor was very good,
Expect for the fact that the corset is on backwards! I laugh my ass off everytime I see this book.
So close, and yet . . . so far.
Hey, Bella, thanks for reminding me of how much I liked those Pino covers on the old Amanda Quicks. The step-backs were the right combination of tasteful front cover and nice art inside.
I confess, I like the cover for Shannon Drake’s Bride of the Wind. ::hangs head in shame:: It’s Fabio, all man-tittylicious and hair-blowy, and the woman is in a dress that probably makes Tonda cry, and the pose is more than a little suggestive of bondage, but…
Sometimes the sum of something is more than the parts.
(Huh. The same art was reused on the cover of Jude Deveraux’s La Heredera, which is the Spanish edition of something I can’t identify as I don’t speak any Spanish beyond “Yo no habla Espanol.”
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Then there’s a book that has the most unintentionally hilarious cover, and I cannot remember the title… It was an Avon book from the mid-90s, a Western historical. The woman is sitting with her back to the reader, looking over her shoulder at us, and looking pissed off. The dress is unzipped (zipper!). The guy, with long flowing locks and massive, tanned mantitty is gazing down at her as if he’s never seen boobs before.
Her dress is yellow. The primary colors on the cover are yellow and red. Can anyone identify this?
—E
“Heredera” means heiress. And for a Fabio cover, that one is (shhhhh) kinda hot. At least she’s looking him straight in the eye, refusing to fall asleep in the midst of his bondage armhold like some cover ladies are prone to do. Here’s the link.
So maybe that’s a different topic altogether: cheesy, cliched, horrible covers that – for some reason – you like anyway 🙂
lovelysalome
Duchess Huntinne-Muffine
I find that I don’t like the covers of most of the Black Lace books. Some of the them are just plain weird.
The women on the cover of Emma Holly’s Menage with the bowl cut bangs and playtex bra would have prevented me had I not read a review about it.
Also bad any DiSalvo cover. It almost ruins the stories for me.
OK, admittedly I haven’t read this one, but could someone please tell me what the hell is up with the cover of White Vengeance? Amazon tried to sell it to me when I clicked on the link for Hope’s Captive. Not only is the cover itself just a whole WORLD of wrong, but the title is just… festive. My first thought when I read it was “Ahh, obviously members of the Klu Klux Klan enjoy a bodice ripper now and then!”
The guy on the cover seriously looks like a reject from an Olivia Newton John video. And which member of the Corleone family did they piss off enough to have that poor horse beheaded and stuck up in the sky like that? Poor horsie… it’s always the innocent who suffer. No, I take that back, because I’m not very innocent and this cover is seriously making me suffer.
Blimey, Sanachan. Thank you so much for sharing that lovely image of a traditional meeting between a woman of the Authentic Native American Goh-Goh-Boutte tribe and her spiritual adviser of the Loyn-Klahth clan. So tasteful. Especially those burning flames behind the title. Nice reviews, too.
Okay, I’m going to do this in reverse and mention a book I didn’t like with a cover I did (and FWIW, count me as one of the crazies who loved The Windflower AND its original cover).
Book I didn’t like: Adele Ashworth’s Duke of Scandal http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060528419.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V54591000_.jpg
Cover worth checking out: on the cover there is a document that is actually an article from the New York Daily News on the war in Iraq: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/v-pfriendly/story/359230p-306075c.html
Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? Or was the art department at Avon making a little war commentary?
Angie, I agree, Emma Holly is a great writer. Most of her covers are pretty good but that one kind of sits out odd amongst the rest and just did not do the book justice.
DeSalvo—what is it with DeSalvo? He looks so damned bored most of the time. And when he smiles? It reminds me of the Addam’s Family Values movie where Wednesday finally smiles at camp (after being suppossedly brainwashed by Disney movies) and everyone backs away, frightened. There’s this hint of craziness there that makes you wonder if maybe he performs weird experiments on small animals.
Aww, Edith Layton gave the Bitches a shout out over on her new group blog http://www.wordwenches.com where they’re discussing covers too.
Well well well! I do think that the bridgerton series seem to be cursed with weird covers. Take this:http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/3a/8d/866cd250fca0c189813f5010.L.jpg
Apparently, the Hero is a stick figure with weird hulking bigness on top and none on the bottom. The heroine is wearing a non-regency dress, and apparently is related to rudolph. she really needs to get some of the lotion tissues, instead of using the scratchy kind. Also, Arabella by Georgette Heyer is a great book, but the cover of the seventies is horrible. I think the heroine has reached the world record for eye makeup worn at one time. And her pink dress is blinding. It looks like a flamingo.