Grab yourself a hot cup of Cover Snark!
Amanda: Excuse me? What?
Sarah: But I see two nips. Shouldn’t it be Wolf Nips? WAIT. Is Dr. Nips a shifter?! That is a terrific potential story right there. (Also: Vivian Arend writes really fun shifter stories, and often plays with the tropes.)
No, definitely two nipples there.
CarrieS: I see no way that title can work. Ever.
Elyse: It’s the Dr. Nips Halloween special.
Amanda: There’s a lot going on here and I hope it’s like one of those seeing magic pictures, where if you stare at it long enough, something will make sense.
Sarah: Why are there so many legs?
Amanda: Also, did this dude really drag his kettle bell and weightlifting bar out to a river?
Sarah: Where is the other half of the bar? Is he about to get sucked into the water? He’ll be bear food in a few.
CarrieS: I…am I awake?
Amanda: Is she wearing a velvet sparkly jumpsuit?
Sarah: I thought it was hair. A lot of body hair. With a large areola.
So which one is Mark?
Elyse: Is it just me or can you see one of her nipples and it’s huge?
Amanda: And I can’t unsee it now.
Amanda: That title is an assault on the eyes.
Sarah: Oh, dear. I find I must express my dislike of that font and all its incarnations. I cannot read it. I spend half the time trying to identify the letters and then, every time, I’m wrong. This font is the new “Scriptina” on romance covers, and I dislike it in quite a measurable amount.
I think it says, “Dandelion.”
CarrieS: I thought it said “Damien.”
Elyse: I see Daniah.
That last cover and the annoying font is like Captcha for books.
So why are two ballroom dancers doing the tango in the Alaskan wilderness?
Dahlia, maybe?
Perhaps it’s a cunning marketing ploy to make you open the book to see what the title really is?
I am officially old.
Cover #1: I have a framed pen-and-ink drawing by a local artist that is a much better version of the wolf-silhouetted-against-trees. After I post this I’m going to go stare at it for a while as a brain cleanser.
Cover #2: Isn’t she cold? The guys at least have something on their arms (we’re going to ignore voyeur’s shorts), but this looks high-altitude to me & that’s usually not warm enough for that dress. Also, really not the terrain for heels. Or dancing.
Cover #3: I… have no words.
Cover #4: I swear I thought the title was Onion. In my defense, I have corneal dystrophy & my contrast vision sucks right now (corneal transplant surgery coming up in May!), but can we just kill that font with fire? It’s bad, & the dark blue doesn’t help.
I’m trying to figure out what coffee shop would have baristas dressed like that. It really seems like a scalding liquid accident waiting to happen, even beyond the dance-weight-room-river-wilderness issue.
The cold mark cover is… creepy. And creepier the longer I look at it, like her right arm/hand is a totally different skin color than her face, but almost the same color as his hair and it’s disturbing. Also I can’t figure out if that’s a body suit or hair or alien fungus or what.
On cover four, I *think* it’s Damian, but seriously, comic sans would be better than that font. That font needs to never be used again by anyone. It’s bad, and, if you use it, you should feel bad. (Also that weird mid-blue is not helping anything. It’s not high enough contrast with the black OR the skin.)
I like the title Wolf Nip. It has layers. There is wolfnip – like catnip only for wolves. There is wolf nip – as in a nip you get from a frisky wolf. And then there’s the nips which are already covered – that is, uncovered. I admit the title would have worked better if he had a shirt on.
That Cold Mark cover looks more like a fight scene than a romance. I think she’s about to snap Left Mark’s neck and bite Right Mark’s nose off. Right Mark is trying to tip the other two into the blue glowing goo behind them. Left Mark is totally fine with being eaten by the glowing goo if it means he can get away from her Yeti cosplay.
Cold Mark makes it look like the Targaryens were into threesomes.
I think wolves may have eight nipples? I am not volunteering to get close enough to count.
There is so much going on in the Alaskan Romance cover. Why is the couple ballroom dancing? And that can’t be her barrista uniform , unless it is the Dancing with the Caffeine Coffee Shop and Dance Studio. Small towns often have dual purpose businesses. Fitness guy might be happier in a sunnier climate. He has the look of seasonal affective disorder about him. And I am not sure the PhotoShop artiste for this one understands depth. Legs all over the place!
“Moss” came to mind on the Cold Mark cover. Moss or some kind of polar mermaid with huge nipples.I cannot unsee that nipple.
I’m thinking “Damnation” for that last cover. My old eyes are having trouble with it! Even the cover model looks mildly concerned….
I read the last title as “Durian,” as in, he stinks so bad he’s banned from public transport, and his breath, as Anthony Bourdain described it, “smells as if he’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.”
Several years ago, there was something – TV show, I think – with women meeting Alaskan bachelors with an eye to matrimony, since the population there is heavily weighted towards men. However, one Alaskan woman commented that the odds might be good but the goods were odd.
Amazon says that the title for book 4 is ‘Damian’. I think Dorothea (@10) had a much better idea! That font gave me a headache and a twitch in my left eye. It must die.
I really hope the weightlifter is the barista and the other two are the brutes. I’d read that book.
#1 Is it just me or is that dude’s face kinda….skewed to the side? There’s something just lopsided about his face, beyond the single raised eyebrow. I think his cheekbones are different heights.
#2 Is he sitting on the weights on the end of his barbell? Isn’t that a good way to get the barbell to flip up and smack him in the back of the head?
Also, why is she a tango dancer? Isn’t that a rather impractical outfit for being out by a river? Is she the barista? Is the dude in the suit the barista? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?
#3 What is even happening with her outfit? And where is her other leg? Does she only have one? And where are the dude on the right’s legs? There’s something anatomically just wrong with everything on here. And is her outfit glowing or is that supposed to be sun trying to escape from that dress-like-thing?
#4 I think his name is Darnian. Maybe he goes by Darn for short.
The Two Brutes book intrigued me. It’s part of a 4-book series, the first two not available on Kindle Unlimited, sadly. I’m glad I didn’t judge a book by its unfortunate cover because clumsy photoshop aside, it’s really entertaining. I’m only halfway through, but it is not a menage book, as the name implies. (One of the “brutes” is a jeep.) The writing is great, the characters quirky and fun, and the romance is slow burn. I’m enjoying it so far.
@Tibicina – in the Puget Sound (Seattle) area, we have “bikini baristas.” So the tango dress isn’t technically too little or too sparkly. But that kettlebell bothers me.
Cold Mark looks like the romance novel version of Serial Apeist from The Big Bang Theory.
Cold Mark: she’s having a ménage with the guys from Nelson (or is it Hanson?).
I read #4 as Danhiah, which sounds like the possible name of an Old Testament prophet: “And lo when forty days hath passed, Danhiah went down to the tent of the Medianites and slew them.” (King James Version)
@Kerri – yes, the dude in book #1 is lopsided – including his nips! (One is well below the title, the other is in the midline of the title.) Which would be OK, I guess, except for the fact that the book title includes the word “nip”
@Hope – the title also works for me with the multiple layers, other than my aforementioned issue with the dude’s nips.
Davhiar: the hypnotist. He will lure you into a relationship with his eyes.
I totally agree about the awfulness of the script on the last book title and its unreadability. In fact, I think that script may have been at least partially responsible for the title of a book by Kelli Callahan misspelled on the cover as “Mr. Roomate.” (I can’t find it on Amazon but it does show on her page on the prolificworks website.) It bothered me so much I sent the author an email about it, but never heard back.
Is it just me or is there something weird about the proportions of the arm on the left on the Cold Mark cover?
These feel nitpicky. There are much worse covers than this.
I hope it’s like one of those seeing magic pictures, where if you stare at it long enough, something will make sense
Unfortunately, when I stare at those magic pictures long enough, I get a headache. There’s an analogy in there somewhere. And what is it about the endless nipples?! Every damn week there’s some male model with nipples again.
did this dude really drag his kettle bell and weightlifting bar out to a river?
Nahh, you’re just saying that because you don’t see the superhighway and all-amenities rest stop a few yards out of frame. How else could Red-Sequined Lady have got there in spike heels?
“A Mark Novel”? Is this like last year’s hammer-themed male stripper series? Water Mark–with its sequel, High Water Mark–Bench Mark, Trade Mark, Ear Mark …
comic sans would be better than that font
I think we have a new criterion for cover font evaluation.
I’m glad I didn’t judge a book by its unfortunate cover because …
Well, that’s the real heartbreak of snarkable covers, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if a silly book has a silly cover; nobody has missed anything. But when a cover actively reduces the chances of a potential reader picking up a good book, you’ve got a problem. It’s like when some TV ad is so stupid, it makes you avoid buying the advertised product just on principle.
That last cover…how did your eyes ever leave that man’s gorgeous face long enough to notice the font??