We’re making some slight scheduling changes! We’ve already bumped Books on Sale to every day now, but we’ll be running Cover Snark one extra week a month. That’s three Snarks, instead of two!
Times are tough, y’all, and we’ll do what we can to make the burden a little lighter.
Amanda: Hero and heroine have a one night stand, heroine gets pregnant, hero delivers his oWN BABY
Sarah: HER GIFT OMG
Adam, Sarah’s husband: …. K.
Tara: Nope. just nope. to everything.
Kiki: I’m sorry, but the only thing I can think of is Santa delivering a baby and I DEEPLY hate that.
Lara: He doesn’t look alert enough to actually create the baby, let alone deliver it. I like my medical peeps very much awake.
Shana: +Christmas. Just in case you weren’t hooked by this amazing plot alone.
Maya: Also, I’m gonna need him to sterilize that stethoscope.
Sneezy: He looks more high than a person who’s actually high. And what’s all that indistinguishable white stuff he’s slumped against???
Charlotte B: He looks like he’s still drunk. Is this the morning after?
Amanda: Okay…but can we just address the obvious that his ass is out?
Elyse: Traditions that apparently include getting frostbite on your testicles…
Shana: I’m no expert on proper snowballing technique, but this looks questionable.
Sarah: I think there’s a series of covers like this, and they’re so silly they’re charming.
Big balls visual joke? Check. Goofy underoos? Check. Altogether silly? Double check.
Amanda: It reminds me of the sparkly underpants cover I think we did for a previous Snark.
Tara: But how else will his friend see his Christmas underpants?
Sneezy: Why does only one of them have his pants down? Is it his turn to see if his dick freezes off? Why is throwing a snowball at…whatever he’s aiming at more important than pulling his pants up???
I have QUESTIONS
Sarah: THESE COVERS ARE VERY CHEEKY Y’ALL. VERY.
Tara: “cheeky”
Sarah: Like, maybe that was the whole brief sent to the cover artist.
BRIEF. GET IT. BRIEF.
Sneezy: Wait!!! His briefs are probably the kind with a hole for his dick.
Catherine: You know, someone out there thought that this cover was a good idea. And I have questions for that person.
From Deborah: I think the cover model is going to learn it’s a bad idea to ejaculate all over a wolf’s dreams. *hears Duran Duran in the background*
Adam: “I smell like I sound!”
Sarah: Today in unfortunate font choices.
Elyse: I’m concerned by his total lack of body hair.
Sarah: That didn’t even register with me! The icon/logo/odd shading on his neck did, though. A strange sunburn pattern brought about by haphazard sunscreen application?
Tara: I wondered if it was a bad facial hair choice at first. Now I’m wondering if it’s a ghost.
Also, that font is just offensive.
Catherine: Unrelated: that wolf is definitely looking hungrily at his arm. Also, what’s going on with his neck? Is that a scar? A tattoo? Really confused veins? A terrible, awful mistake…?
Sneezy: Looks like several parasites are gearing up to burst from his chin to me.
And look, I guess wanting one last orgasm before you leave this earthly plane is a reasonable thing to want, but how can anyone manage to rub one out when a wolf right there, critiquing your farts?
Tara: Does she have one ghost hand?
Carrie: I was thinking “I don’t hate it” right up until Tara HAD to point out the missing hand and now I’m all creeped out!
Aarya: I looked at the blurb. I can’t stop laughing that he’s the Duke of Darcy.
The heroine is an architect and I’m always here for historical architects.
Shana: She looks like she’s fighting her instincts to take her ghost hand and run.
Claudia: I can’t get over how ill-fitting her ensemble looks. Maybe she’s escaping a forced marriage with Baron Bingley and had to borrow clothes.
Sneezy: He looks very surprised to find her there.
And I’m also entirely confused by what she’s wearing. As a jacket, it’s useless. As a decorative element, it looks too much like a jacket to be decorative.
And now Tara has me thinking of ghosts. Because how can she only have a ghost hand and not be a ghost? Is he a ghost? Or has the ghost of another chomped off her hand and replaced it with their own???
Tara: Well, either it’s a ghost hand or all the clouds are coming from out of that sleeve…
EllenM: This one cracks me up because it’s not that bad at first glance but then you look again and it gets worse and worse.
Sarah: In .02 seconds she tosses him other shoulder and into the sea.
Catherine: Yeah, that’s not an embrace, it’s either a really awkward dance lesson, or Sarah is right. I’m leaning towards the latter.
Duke Darcy’s Castle appears to be St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall – which was never home to a Duke, only Earls and Barons. Title inflation in action.
Check out snowballing in urban dictionary
In the first one, intellectually I know it’s a Christmas tree in the upper corner, but I keep seeing a salad.
@Heather M: Me too. First thing I saw was radishes and parsnips.
#2 reminds me: We were out running errands Thursday before Florida finally shut down. Waiting at a traffic light and there’s a girl standing on the corner holding a skateboard and wearing distressed jeans. She turns around and her butt cheeks are hanging out. If she was wearing underwear, had to be a thong. I just hoped she didn’t fall off that board and end up with road rash on her backside.
But can we talk about the tattoo on the first cover? That tree has a nose, or possibly other body part…
@Heather M: I thought it was a salad at first glance too! The gold ornaments look like croutons.
@faellie I’ve reviewed the book, and it’s set in St. Gabriel’s Mount, which is based on same.
The book itself is tragically kinda mediocre.
The second one looks like it was part of a Dreamspinner Advent Calender collection, which usually have design styles similar to this.
Baron Bingley made me laugh so hard
Dr Nips up there really does look like a new parent after a colicky night. Either that or he got sacked/sanctioned for getting a patient pregnant and he’s drinking himself into oblivion.
OK, if the body is in soft focus and we’re staring past it at with all the focus on the wolf, does that mean the wolf is the protag? “Gotta keep following this sleepwalking dude around to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble. FML”
Duke Darcy and his companion look like they’re about to go into a dance number from Mary Poppins.
Rhonda, yes, I’ve seen those too
Traditions From the Heart…. give you Frosted Vanilla Salty Balls. (I hope someone here watches South Park and gets my reference!)
Duke Darcy’s girlfriend had her arm broken and reattached too far up with the evil power of photoshop.
My shoulder hurts just looking at it lol.
I’ve seen that Darcy cover so many times and never noticed the missing hand. Surprised Avon didn’t catch that.
Looks like an Edwardian/late Victorian DWTS pose.
@Nicky: I’m not sure they didn’t reattach it backwards.
Duke Darcy is a puppet, and his name isn’t Darcy; that’s his title. He’s Irish nobility, possibly J.H. Charles McCarthy IV (or something like that). We just can’t see the puppeteer’s hand as it goes into the back of his head. Plus the artist doesn’t know either how wrists actually bend or how puppets actually work.
@Escapeologist – OMG the tattoo tree has…wood…
Anyone else notice the blue balls?
Wasn’t “Darcy” actually D’Arcy (of Arcy) in the first place? So that adds up to ‘Duke of of Arcy’; total tautology.
‘Arcy’ would be a fitting cheeky title for with the snowball comedy in boxer shorts books though.
Yes, the Cheesecake Boys (that’s what the cover style is called) is a Dreamspinner Press Advent story calendar thing. If you look on their website, you’ll see all of the short stories they do for the Advent calendar each year have the Cheesecake Boys with their pants falling down and funny underwear exposed. They even do coloring pages for Christmas and Halloween.
The last one is a “Dare to Defy” novel. Dare to Defy is the motto of the CW, so maybe the ghost hand is something the Winchesters can investigate.
Pretty sure she’s delivering her own gift (and doing the actual work) – he’s just the glorified assistant/sperm donor.