It’s time for Cover Snark. You know the drill!
Tara: The mismatch between the cover and the title is baffling to me. It looks like a cute contemporary, but it’s apparently D/s story, and I haven’t come across any fluffy f/f D/s romances.
Amanda: I fell asleep while looking at this.
Elyse: The background looks like a placeholder for an actual image.
Sarah: Please mistress for all our sales let’s get off this piano.
Carrie: A good cover tells me something but I have no idea what this book is about other than “A lesbian romance.” Is it about a Dom piano teacher? Cause piano teachers can be MEAN if you don’t practice!
Amanda: Giant man? Or a tiny hot air balloon?
Elyse: My first instinct was to take out my slingshot and shoot it down like in Animal Crossing.
Sneezy: The two are weirdly in focus at the same time…while the rest is not.
Lara: That is next level dedication to puns… hot heir, indeed.
Claudia: Sneezy, that is bothering me too — you can’t have it both ways!
Catherine: Ok, I’ve decided that this is a Gulliver’s travel retelling.
Richard Smallcock, heir to his family’s lucrative empire of hair product shops, is lucky to survive after a hairspray explosion sinks his ship. He awakens a prisoner on an unknown island, held captive by a woman no larger than his thumb. But soon the threads that bind him to the ground are the least of his concerns, for Althea Small has also captured… his heart.
Althea Small has no time for giant hair heirs. As Lilliput’s chief engineer, her mission is to create hot air balloons – not ogle hot heirs. But she finds herself strangely drawn to her gigantic prisoner, even though certain logistical difficulties do present themselves. Sometimes, size really does matter.
A story of love, size, and improbable uses for shampoo.
Maya: …would read
Carrie: would read
Catherine: It’s pretty wild. I think they eventually manage to make things work through a combination of engineering and volumising / extra body conditioner (it really works!). But there are some very weird and necessarily creative sexytimes before that happens.
Althea then decides to explore this new, larger world in her conveniently volumised hot air balloon, and Dick thinks he has lost her, but eventually, her innate fascination with hot heirs draws her back to him and they live happily ever after.
She designs a new sort of hair treatment that is literally uplifting, and the final scene is a whole lot of elderly ladies happily floating through the sky while they receive their blue hair treatment. It’s very sweet.
Maya: You are amazing. If you promise to write this, I promise to send along inspirational hot air balloon gifs.
From Dee: Two things jumped at me…the annoying title font and the way his suspenders fall as if they are accentuating his butt. Plus the general issue of bare chested firefighters. Unless he has fire retardant chest hair.… Those suspenders are like firefighter booty spanx.
Sarah: Butt.
Amanda: All I see is this:
Sarah: I just laughed so loudly I startled Wilbur.
Elyse: Amanda, I think you won the internet for today.
Tara: Okay, yup, that’s all I see now too, Amanda.
Sneezy: Is it just me, or are his suspenders too short for, well, anything?
From Emily: I came across this book while browsing Amazon and cannot get past the eyebrow raise. It’s dramatic. It’s mesmerizing. It does NOT look like he is happy she’s snuggling him. Thought the Bitches might enjoy!
Tara: Was the family a secret from him too?
Amanda: Yeah, I’m with Tara. He doesn’t look pleased about this secret family.
Tara: “But we don’t keep secrets in our family,” his eyebrow said.
Amanda: “…wait, am I the alpha?”
Tara: Is SHE the alpha?!
Amanda: Also the tagline: “classic romance with a furry twist”
Elyse: Maybe she’s a furry and that’s the secret.
Maya: I think she found fleas and he’s out here trying to deny it
Sneezy: Um…in the gentlest way possible…a lumbersexual turning out to be a werewolf is not a twist. In Canada, it’s almost about to be sanctified into the constitution.
CarrieS: Judging from his expression, sweetie, he’s just not into you.
My initial — pre-coffee — perception of the Heat cover was that I was seeing a centaur in fire fighting gear. It’s a much less interesting cover now that my brain has processed angles and perspective.
I have to say, on that last cover, I do not get furry vibes. It looks more like a time travel story with a civil war officer who is very dubious about this modern debutante and her touchy ways.
The first cover reminds me of the movie Big. (Which is one of those movies that seems way icky in retrospect.)
I’m waiting for D3 to tell us how many other covers Mr. Alpha’s Secret Family has been on because he looks familiar to me and I pay little attention to men on covers. I know, I know. I’m all about the pretty dresses.
All I see in that Hot Heir cover was an opportunity missed: if the title had been moved a teeny bit the nipple would have dotted the i.
@LML: I see my reputation as cover model maven precedes me—lol! I think the male model on ALPHA‘S SECRET FAMILY may be Victorio Piva who is famous for his facial hair. However, because he is not a member of DiscoDollyDeb’s alternate-universe reverse harem, I’m afraid I can’t say for sure.
The first cover: Boring! I think Christmas bauble head woman (from the cover snark a month or so ago) would be a better fit as this one looks like the world’s dullest chick lit.
Third cover: I thought centaur too or the jacket makes a third leg.
Fourth cover: man look like he just been kissed by one of his elderly aunts.I
As usual a bit of a laugh on a Monday.
All I can say is thank you! All the comments, both in text and here below, are wonderful. It’s been.. a couple of weeks of stress and I needed this. This afternoon I go to my volunteer job leading horses for disabled riders, and my good day will be complete.
All I can think about with that last cover is the bad kerning and subsequent appalling apostrophe placement.
On the Heat cover, I was sure I was seeing a backwards centaur. The actual cover is much less interesting, truthfully.
Hmmm … Are the figures on the first cover just standing around being bored, or are they sneakily inching to the sides so they can jump off and be free?
The first one, “Please, Mistress” is actually right, if you look at the blurb. It’s not a hot-and-heavy or extreme-BDSM story, it’s more of a May/December vibe with the previously-straight girl having fantasies about her “Ice Queen” music mistress. I glanced at the Prologue–a couple of paragraphs that shows that “she never would have imagined being naked and spanked by the woman she fell for”, but it doesn’t sound like a heavy BDSM vibe, or even Fifty Shades of Grey, it reads as “naughty” role-play rather than “torment”, and between a straight couple the spanking would barely register as kinky!
The author is a Brit who writes “down to earth, relatable, funny” lesbian romances.
One of “those” covers with a huge, bright-red glossy-lipsticked mouth, or a straight man’s idea of a female Dominant with all the black leather is coded for BDSM, but it’s way off what they’re trying to attract (which is probably an ordinary lesbian who wants a bit of a thrill but hardly The Story of O.).
Similar to a straight reader who wants a touch of dominance in a cop/firefighter/highlander hero, but not the whole nine yards with a heavy BDSM Dominant or a werewolf Alpha.
To me, the main problem with the first cover (other than being boring), is that the spacing of the background stripes is ideally proportioned to the text size for “A Lesbian Romance” to make it very hard to read.
I don’t think the fire fighter has to worry about his chest hair burning– looks to me like he has not a single strand of body hair. Also, the title font is dreadful, and the little swoosh after the “t” keeps wanting to turn into a “u” or an “i”.
Beard guy looks like an affronted Victorian gentleman. Perhaps naked women on book covers are too much for him.
after Wub’s comment I had to go look at Please Mistress. Given the details in the blurb and the fact that it’s a novella what they chose for design is ‘eh okay.’ I personally would be much more likely to click (even at 99 cents) if the image showed two women touching, with an actual piano, and some laughter. This one makes it look as though music is getting between them, vs bringing them together.
Hot Heir: the Claudia/Catherine version = LOL.
Heat. Call me overly cautious, but if I found myself six feet away from a wildfire, I would not take off my protective jacket and turn my back on the blaze, as is strongly suggested by the hue and texture of the model’s back.
Maybe the first cover is trying to be Naughty about “tickling the ivories”. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just not very good.
On the second cover, the balloonist is descending with telescope in hand, testing the rumor that one can see straight through the ear canal to the other side. There’s just something “nobody’s home” about the man…
The unseen tag line: “I’m six foot four and costuming only had a five foot two set of suspenders remaining after the last two cover shoots. I need a better agent.”
Last, one must wonder about her out-of-frame hand. “An ice cube down my pants? Really?”
The first I didn’t even notice they were lesbians and I missed that it says “A Lesbian Romance.” Since Twilight/50 Shades, pianos have been so common.
The fourt one reminds of Detective Lassiter on Psych when he was in his Civil War re-enactment costume. I guess I wasn’t alone thinking he’s looks a Civil War guy.
Why is the beard a very different color than the hair on his head? It’s disconcerting. It’s as if he has a squirrel on his face.
@Miss Louisa,
That actually happens more often than you’d think. I have a friend who is salt and pepper on top, but his beard (when he has one) is auburn and grey. This coloration does seem a bit odd, it’s not so unusual!
@LML, Captain Obvious. That’s all I see when I look at that cover.