It’s time for Cover Awe, where we look at pretty covers and discuss what we like about them!
Elyse: Oh wow.
Amanda: I think we had a previous cover in this series on Cover Awe. They are just killing it with these colors.
Sarah: This series has excellent covers, I agree. There’s a compelling prismatic effect to the dress folds which I love. Wow.
CarrieS: Yes, pls. Will read. Will stare at cover.
Sarah: Something about the pose and proportions are wrong. Shoulders/neck/arms/head are not right to my eyeballs. But the colors are beautiful.
RHG: Also there is clearly wind but not in her hair.
Elyse: SHE HAS A SWORD!
Sarah: That sword is not messing around, to be sure.
RHG: But is it made out of hardenable steel though.
Amanda: The previous book in this series has a heroine with an old timey gun, so I’m sensing a theme!
Sarah: NICE.
CarrieS: You can’t climb the rigging in that dress.
Amanda: Looked up the description. It’s an Anastasia retelling set IN FUCKING SPACE!
Elyse: I KNOW!
Sarah: Cheese and rice, that’s a cover that’ll punch you in the eyeballs repeatedly.
Amanda: Got this in the mail and I think it’s so cute. I’m interested to see the cover treatment for the finished book.
Elyse: This reminds me of the Thin Man movies which I love.
Also we had an Airedale and Fox Terrier as kids so I would read this on principle
Sarah: I have those shoes. I feel so stylish.
Not that I am wearing them now. I’m wearing slippers while my dog licks the cutting board.
CarrieS: If your dog is pulling that much you should train them to heel. Is this dog getting enough exercise? I worry.
Love the Eva Leigh cover – that gorgeous face, the dress, the colors, her pose!
That boaty one, though. Something about the way her hand is… you don’t hold a sword like that!
Life on the Leash cover – @CarrieS yikes, MTE! The dog is pulling, she’s holding the leash badly, and her posture is so awkward it’s killing me. They BOTH need retraining & more walks!
(I will never understand romanticizing bad dog behavior and handling tbh)
That MJP cover – hoo boy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scimitar with a ballgown in all my years o’ reading many, many historicals, but maybe it’s the next thing in fans (the better to thwap a cheeky rogue with, my dear!).
My question is: Where is that behemoth of a blade attached to on her person? There appears to be no sword belt or cross-body scabbard holder, and based on the fact that her dress is flowing in the wind instead of being weighted down halfway to her navel by that sword, I can only assume that it is being held up by anti-gravity.
Those Jon Paul covers get me every time. His work is incredible. The dresses!!! Especially how he transforms the poses to photos to cover art.
The Scoundrel’s dress is doing something really funky. It’s perfectly fitted down to her hips and then it all rucks up for no apparent reason in an illogical direction. It’s pretty but it can’t make up its mind which way the wind is blowing.
The first thing I noticed about the Scoundrel cover was that she’s holding the cutlass backwards. Maybe her vacant gaze is caused by looking into her rear view mirror to time her attack when she stabs someone who is sneaking up behind her.
The cover of LIFE ON THE LEASH is definitely old school Barbie and her come-hither face. Agree they both need dog training classes.
So I looked up the description of Life on the Leash and the heroine is a dog trainer! Also it specifically mentions that she has a rescue Pit Bull (near and dear to my heart since one of my two dogs is a rescue Pittie), which is most certainly not the dog on this cover – disappointing to say the least!
That cutlass pose is EXACTLY what you have to do when you’re dramatizing an olde timey scene at school and the teacher wants everyone to “get it up on its feet” and your character needs to have a sword FOR REASONS but you don’t actually get to use it for most of the scene and you’re not wearing a belt that day and you have to stand there awkwardly for ages and try to be serious and present and hold a script somehow too.
The author of a Life on the Leash is a dog trainer. Victoria trained my puppy years ago! Needless to say, I bought the book.
I am constantly convinced that those who design book covers do not live in the real world. Theirs is a world of strange winds, gravity defying hair and clothing, colours beyond the knowledge of man and animals that either behave like people or like no animals on earth ever do.
I would like to live there with them.