Hi there! Do you need some Cover Snark? I think you need some Cover Snark!
From Skye: What the heck is going on with this dress???
Sarah: I have many questions, not the least of which is whether that dress qualifies as a vegetable.
Tara: Yes, much cabbage. Very healthy.
Amanda: For some reason, it reminds me of a toilet paper cozy.
Sarah: Leafy greens FTW
Shana: My first thought was a labia. Maybe this cover is trying to show us the wide range of labial diversity? Sex educators could use her skirt to help people learn that there is no “normal” or “perfect” vulva. Sometimes you look like a cabbage, and that’s OK.
Claudia: Amanda, it’s the ruffle edge and minty color!
A Cabbage Patch doll all grown up…
Tara: Shana, I’m never going to look at cabbage the same way again.
Carrie: I was about to say that actually I rather like it but now I can’t un-see the cabbage, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Tara: I suppose it could almost be the not curly kale, but the colour isn’t quite right…
Susan: I’m trying to work out how it’s supposed to stay up. Like, it doesn’t look like a dress that’s open, it looks like that’s what the back is SUPPOSED to look like, so… How?
Sarah: Maybe the front AND the back defy gravity? Or she walks around with carefully placed industrial fans.
Susan: Extreme use of fashion tape?
Amanda: I’ve never used fashion tape but as a bigger busted woman, I don’t trust it.
Susan: Me either to be honest. I am very much “industrial strength bras or bust.”
Maya: She’s giving me a bit of Brienne of Tarth though too.
Lara: It’s sexy cabbage and I’m going to lean in real hard and embrace it. This dress is the Elizabeth Hurley safety pin dress of the cover game – game changer! Or perhaps the cabbage’s ~ sexy moves ~ have hypnotised me…
Sneezy: Cabbage dress. Vagina skirts. Cabbage vagina. Cabbage cat. Vagina patch.
What have you all done, I can’t stop.
Tara: That’s poetry, right there.
Catherine: You’d need more than double-sided tape, surely? The weight of those skirts would be too much.
Actually…are those skirts, or is she being attacked from behind by a giant sentient cabbage vulva? Because the more I look at it, the more I wonder if she is about to be engulfed…
Sneezy: Cabbage vagina clam
Tara: That sounds like a Syfy movie.
AJ: I’m getting the vegetable vibes but also a hint of eldritch abomination. Cabbage-thulhu.
OH WAIT NO! The dress IS an eldritch creature but the lady-face in the front is just a lure for the unsuspecting. Like an anglerfish!
Catherine: Ooh, perfect hypothesis! I think AJ has it!
Susan: I think I’ve read that book.
CarrieS: Seeing this come up on my screen again, my first impulse is still to love it. If only I liked cabbage as much in real life.
Ellen: Honestly I LIVE for this cover. The DRAMA! The CABBAGE of it all! Leafy greens, but make it FASHION!
Catherine: I mean, it’s a really *beautiful* sentient cabbage vulva dress. But it’s still a cabbage vulva dress. The Cabbage wears Prada? The Cabbage *is* Prada? Claimed by the Fashionista Cabbage Demon?
From HNG: His body looks like a dead insect’s carapace, especially where the side tatts are. Or those costumes for little boys where they print on muscles & then quilt them. That Adonis belt is pretty scary too (looks like bowels).
Sarah: HE SHAT THE SUN.
Catherine: All those protruding veins! He’s straining so hard that something has caught fire…
AJ: “And it burns, burns, burns/That ring of fire… ”
Elyse: There is no ointment for the situation.
Claudia: This takes the expression “he thinks the sun shines from his ass” to disturbing levels.
Catherine: You know, if you look at this from the wrong angle, he looks like he is being grabbed from behind by something with great big claws or talons. No wonder he’s looking down to see what’s going on.
Carrie: I like abs as much as the next person but after a point you gotta figure that anyone who spends that much time working out probably isn’t gonna devote much time to his significant other.
Sneezy: Haaaa the only people I met in irl who had abs either a) had trouble maintaining romantic relationships with girls who weren’t obsessed with the same sport as them, or b) was a narcissist with DEEP insecurities and had to flex at the mirror to feel good about themselves.
Tara: Yeah, this is one of those guys at work can’t stop talking about crossfit and what he did at his latest tournament. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a chicken breast and steamed broccoli to go with the flex.
Ellen: My headcanon for this cover is that he took some radioactive steroids and now his, um, instrument shoots fire
Tara: pew pew!
CharlotteB: I’ll never be tired of covers where the hero gazes at his own junk.
Lara: I was so distracted by the – what I thought were – fish gills that I didn’t even notice the DOBERMAN in the bottom corner.
Catherine: See, I thought this cover was gorgeous – love the colour, and who doesn’t like pretty glowing DNA? But now that Lara has drawn my attention to the dog, I’m feeling kind of uneasy. Is this a mad scientist romance? Is she genetically engineering super-dogs? Or dog-human hybrids?
Also, now I’m worrying about her lack of personal protective gear. No lab coat. No goggles. Sleeveless gown. I bet she isn’t even wearing shoes that cover her toes. It’s an OH&S nightmare, frankly. And I bet she didn’t get ethics approval for the dog hybridisation experiment either. No time for paperwork when you are Chasing Victory. Oh God, stop me now…
Amanda: All signs point to this being a Resident Evil romance where Umbrella Corp has released the t-virus at some fancy billionaire gala.
Lara: …Okay, but I would 100% read that AU fic.
CarrieS: As would I.
Sarah: I thought all that helix was her dress.
Sneezy: I thought they were her pearls.
Dog.
Ghost.
The whole thing looks so fucking random.
Maya: Please, please, please, someone point me in the direction of any Resident Evil romances!!
CarrieS: I never thought I’d say these words, but: Lose. The. Dog. Actually, lose the guy, too. Also I legit thought those were batons and she’s a competitive twirler. I just can’t see anything else, and it matches the title. Now I’m disappointed.
Tara: It doesn’t help that he looks like someone who would get casted in a Lifetime movie simply because they can’t afford Bradley Cooper.
Ellen: First I thought the DNA was a wing motif and the colors + title made me think “ice skating romance” and honestly I’ve never been more disappointed to realize something was DNA in my life. I share CarrieS’ disappointment. I’m ignoring the dog because my brain is trying hard enough to process the chaos as it is.
Amanda: The thumb near is the belly button might just be one of the most uncomfortable cover snark things I’ve ever seen.
Sneezy: I didn’t even see it until you pointed it out. NOW IT’S ALL I SEE!!
Sarah: Maybe she’s about to tickle him…TO DEATH?
Shana: At least the title matches the cover. There are definitely roses, and since she’s about to dig into his torso and rip out his entrails…I’m going to say “war” is a go.
Sneezy: Ooo – I didn’t even notice the title! War indeed. Maybe she’s about to implant an alien embryo into him through his belly button. A Rose Alien. Also, I just noticed – is the 15 on him supposed to be a tattoo???? It looks like the sheen and shading on the ten is supposed to match the ridges on his abs, but the 5 looks like it’s already lifted off and is ready to form its own colony. (Away from roses and alien embryos.)
Ellen: GREAT cover for a body horror novel wherein the many squalling young of the evil monster queen are about to bust through a man’s abdominal wall and feed on a diet of red roses; not so much for a romance.
Catherine: is he ripping his abdomen open with his claws? This cover is really concerning.
CharlotteB: OW OW OW CUT YOUR NAILS.
The guy on the Songbird cover looks seriously dehydrated; dude clearly isn’t downing 8 glasses of water a day.
And that last cover has me scared for the alien fingers and completely confused about all the numbering: why is there fifteen written in white? Do they think we won’t be smart enough for Roman numerals? And then at the bottom it says “War of Roses Book One”?
Pass.
@Luce the numbers get even more confusing on the sequels’ covers. Book 2 has a VII and book 3 a I… (I accidentally clicked through to Amazon)
That’s DNA on chasing victory? I thought it was Brussels sprouts made out of crystal. Maybe y’all just have cruciferous veggies on my brain.
If the cabbage thing on the first cover is a garment, it looks to me like the kind of diaphanous open front robe used to “cover” sexy lingerie. A cabbage wrap, as it were.
Given the placement of “Song Bird,” I am curious to know if that is what he named his penis?
@Escapeologist Wahaha, thanks for that extra info! Just when you think things can’t get weirder…
That Songbird cover looks like a man straining so hard he’s about die on the toilet like Elvis. Definitely should bet some cabbage dress and more water in his diet.
Her ring finger nail is shorter than the rest and that’s all I can see.
Looked at the Songbird cover and all I could think was that a train was about to shoot out from between his legs. Sing it with me: “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel…”
And perhaps that’s the Fifteenth Victim of the Rose God?
I am dying. I think this is my favorite part of SBTB. Thanks for the laughs!! The man pooping the sun. Perfection.
I’m more worried about those bulging veins on the songbird, he needs some sort of laxative?
Y’all, I started laughing so hard when I saw the Chasing Victory cover with that random dog in the corner that my hubs looked over and said “are you reading this week’s Bachelor recap?” Thank you for all of the giggles!
I thought the helix thing was a rubber bone toy (hur!) being thrown for the dog. The dog is all like, when is it going to land, people? I don’t have all day…
Songbird’s singin’ “Don’t let the sun catch you cryin'”
War of the Roses? Or Bachelor being sacrificed to the Rose God? Who needs an athame when they’ve got a stainless steel manicure? Elyse should weigh in on this.
The tattoos on the guy on the Songbird cover look like some kind of rot. Does he have an infection? Has it spread to his groin? Because at least that would explain why he’s staring at it.
Does the woman on Chasing Victory look like Keira Knightly to anyone else? Mostly just the top half of her face and her hair.
Chasing Victory’s not bad, except for that poor dog pasted on top of everything. It looks like they paid someone professional to create it. Then decided it needed something else and didn’t want to pay any more. Or maybe the professional refused to add the dog, so puppy became a DIY. If it was me, I’d cut Bradley too.
And I love the colors on the Cabbage Patch. Design — not so much.
I thought the DNA on chasing victory was one of those things where you swing the metal ball, and it hits the row of other metal balls, so they all start swinging in patterns.
And the war of roses is definitely Bachelor fanfic.
Thank you for sharing these glorious horrors, and your commentary.
Love the more dynamic definitions, all I was making of the dog and DNA combo was that the DNA strands look like ladders of bones, arrayed elaborately a la wine racks.
@Zyva: I would totally read a novel about ladders of bones!
Mr Sunshatt’s blood pressure must be at lethal levels. Be a shame if he fatally imploded in mid-nookie.
These never fail to make me laugh. Thanks, SBs!!!
Is anyone else watching Project Runway right now? My first thought on “Honor before Heart” was “a rejected Sergio design.”