Hey! Did you need some Cover Snark today?
From Melodie: I’m always attracted to a book where the hero’s face is an appeal for help (not!). I’m guessing that he’s been ambushed by a drunken ex and he’s begging one of his friends to help peel her off and stuff her in an Uber.
Tara: I see that as more of a “What? Can’t you see I’m busy?” face.
Sarah: Is it me or does he kinda look like Jake Gyllenhaal?
Sneezy: I can’t unsee it now.
Tara: If Jake Gyllenhaal and Bradley Cooper made a baby, I think.
Catherine: On the plus side, this cover has a real sense of movement. On the minus side, that movement is that she’s about to slide out of his grip and collapse on the floor. Maybe that’s why he’s looking about for help? He hasn’t got a proper grip on her and can’t get one without touching her somewhere unseemly…
Sarah: “Y’all, she’s really slippery help!”
Catherine: It’s the satin dress. You just can’t get any traction.
Sneezy:
Jake’s friend: “No one can hold onto her, she’s too slippery.”
Jake: “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!”
Woman: “What the f-”
Jake: *ssss* *fwip* *ssssk* “Uh.”
Woman: *hanging onto his flailing arms for dear life* “I was standing just fine on my own, but please, tip me off balance while I’m wearing satin. Best idea.”
Jake: *Desperately trying to give his friends the puppy eye, looking more and more deranged* “…guys?”
Elyse: I think this is a romance between a man and a mannequin head
Maya: YESSSSSSS Mannequin 3!!!!!
Mannequin Three: Heads Up
Amanda: Those are certainly some nipples.
Claudia: I can even see a bear face in that left nipple.
Sarah: Me: what do you think is going on with his nipple?
Adam: can’t be good. Definitely want to get that checked out.
Tara: Is it pierced?
Elyse: Paging Dr Nips!
Sneezy: Mannequin 3 looks terrified of the nipples.
Amanda: I feel like this is a coked-up 80s sitcom pitch.
Elyse: Steve Guttenberg would voice the baby.
Carrie: That baby is going to fall off! I have so much anxiety about what is otherwise a snuggly pic!
Tara: Same! How did they get the baby to stay there! Is there a hand hovering just outside the shot, waiting to catch it?
Carrie: It’s a shame because the cozy factor is so close and yet so far.
Tara: Wait, I’ve only just read the title. Is the baby the rockstar?
Carrie: Also I know this is a much-loved subgenera (romances with babies in them) but I’ve had a baby and they are not conducive to romance. Love, yes. I’ve never loved my husband more than when I saw him with our baby. Sexy times? Not so much.
Shana: Is the baby lying on a dead animal?
Sneezy: I would never let a baby near a guitar or an instrument like that.
Catherine : Yes, this cover is making me ever so slightly anxious. I’m worried for the baby and I’m also worried for the guitar…
From Avengela: I have never seen a cover to a romance novel with a heroine looking so annoyed. It’s almost like someone just asked her to pull their finger!
Sarah: I would NOT mess with her. Not ever. Not even once.
Sneezy: …I hear you both, but I’d bet she’s a troll master.
I want her on my team.
Sarah: That’s true. She’d destroy any mansplaining sea-lioning turdblossoms in any comment thread anywhere.
Sneezy: Yes, she’d make them go crying home to their mamas
Catherine: ooh, she’s pretty magnificent. She has *had it up to here* with your bullshit, and she will kill you with her gaze.
I think the nip on Knock out looks more like a star nosed mole, but I can see where you got bear.
omg. You ladies are KILLIN’ it today!!! I’m doing the Wheeze, the Lips Peeled Back… ALL the laughs!
Thanks for the Monday Morning Funs!
xoxoxo
I can’t unseen the bear.
The poor baby on the pelt.
Lady Midnight looks pissed. Perhaps, she’s a vampire hunter?
If he’s a rogue, he’s probably got at least one other lady stashed somewhere in that room and he’s trying to get rid of this one before she finds out. Either he accidentally overbooked or one of them got the time wrong.
I think I see a hand gripping Mr Knock Out’s arm; it looks like she’s the one who got knocked out and woke up just in time to perceive her disastrous fate, and is begging for mercy as he slides her down the conveyor belt into oblivion while his left nipple gazes sadly into her eyes.
HOW did they even get that baby to fall asleep there? Someone has to be off camera holding the other end of that pelt so he doesn’t slide down, but what if he falls off the side? Most anxiety causing cover ever.
Lady Midnight reminds me of Julia Louise Dreyfuss. “Really? You expect me to go into that creepy house, cozy up to the master, and find out what’s making noise in the attic? Well you can just stuff it, buster, I’m outa here!”
The Lady Midnight cover just brings to mind books I wish someone would write where the usual Kickass Heroine in urban fantasy is in the regency era instead of a contemporary, and to avoid blowing her cover she has to pretend to be totally proper but can’t resist giving massive side-eye. E.g., the world has magic, but she’s secretly a super powerful wizard but can’t let anyone know because that would put a target on her back so she hides as a proper society miss with a little bit of witchcraft. Or, as @Denise suggests, she’s a vampire hunter. But has to hide it because no one else knows vampires are real, even though a hellmouth has opened up in Mayfair. I would totally read the s**t out of historical Buffy.
“Mansplaining, sea-lioning turdblossoms.” Even without knowing what sea-lioning is, this is a pretty great insult.
Also, something about the hero on that first book reminds me a lot of a miscellaneous 90s actor. *turning wheels of memory and contemplation* Got it. Brendan Fraser, Encino Man.
Is it just me or does the slippery lady on the first cover look like one of the Wakefield twins from the Sweet Valley High book covers?
Jessica Wakefield has crashed another motorcycle and accidentally travelled through time… and swooned straight into the clutches of a dastardly rogue! Will Elizabeth – with the help of Winston – figure out time travel in time to save her twin from certain ruination?
@Courtney M, have you read Gail Carriger? Because proper Victorian miss who is really a supernatural spy is basically her whole thing, and her books are fantastic.
Knock OUt: I think he is a giant and she a petite woman. Creeps me out, the idea of sex with a giant.
Lady Midnight bears a striking resemblance to the young Kate Mulgrew
This was the snark I needed on this possibly first day of PMS. Thank you for making me laugh!
@Ellie I LOVE Gail Carriger and have read all of her books! It definitely seems the universe has me on some kind of wavelength today, because after posting I discovered that Audible has Meljean Brook’s Iron Duke series on sale, which I have not read but is frequently recommended for fans of Carriger.
@Courtney M – Have you read Colleen Gleason’s Gardella books (sorry, can’t remember the exact name of the series)? Basically a late Regency Buffy. They were published in the 2000’s, and I haven’t read them in a long time, so I don’t know how well they stand up.
@Katy L I have not! But it looks like at some point I picked up The Clockwork Scarab, the first book in her more recent Stoker & Holmes series, so maybe I have to move that up my reading list.
So much good snark today.
First, the Rogue. That face is clearly saying “No more flirting until I can correctly deduce whether they become a stage 5 clinger after too much ratafia.”
Knock Out looks like a Criminal Minds ep waiting to happen (probably a really creepy one directed by Gubler himself)and I don’t even want to know the blurb.
I’m really hoping the baby was Photoshopped from a cover where it’s on the bear skin rug to the guitar one becaue I share in the general anxiety.
I think I must check out the blurb for Lady Midnight. I hope it holds up to the story my imagination is cooking up.
I’m with Dee hoping that baby is photoshopped.
@Courtney M – No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper may also tick those boxes.
The Rest Falls Away: Victoria Book 1 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters: Victoria) Book 1 in Colleen Gleason’s Gardell is free on Amazon.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NMVLLMA?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_0&storeType=ebooks
I’m wondering if Lady Midnight saw the rogue on book 1 with the slippery lady and when he tries to explain she’s not interested in what he says.
Rogues Always Wear Black:
In the fine tradition of “I was so distracted by X, I didn’t notice the Y”: Are they in a church? What are those arched windows in the background? And are those supposed to be rose petals, or is her dress evaporating?
Rockstar Baby:
Just how many photoshop layers went to make up that picture?
— Was it someone’s conscious choice to make the guitar neck hide the floor/wall juncture?
— Wouldn’t even a newborn be considerably wider than an acoustic guitar? Perhaps photographing it full-on, like a cardboard cutout, wasn’t the best idea.
— And are those steel strings? If that baby changes position even slightly, it’s going to be sliced up like an egg.
The lighting on the mannequin/ nipple one is really bothering me. I can understand two (one left, one right) overhead lighting sources highlighting his pecs so that the shadow from his head is narrow . . . But then there’s a random bright spot right in the valley between. Does he have a tiny follow-spot for that cross? Where would you even put a spotlight that small? Or is that light coming through from a hole in his head? Or is it reflecting off her glass eye? So. Many. Questions.
I’ve got to say, an accoustic guitar doesn’t usually scream “rockstar” to me. But I guess an electric guitar would *really* be too narrow!
Lady Midnight is just irritated that she’s frontlit, but the graveyard behind her is backlit (look at the gravestone shadows), and why should she be standing around in the cold posing if the lighting guys can’t make up their minds, and these lights are hot, you morons, get it done!
TBH I’d probably read Rogues Always Wear Black because the weird face he’s pulling pings my “quirky nerd” fetish.
Knock Out looks like the makeup was added in Photoshop and if that’s the case I wish they didn’t do that. It would have been so much stronger without the lady’s head in there. I wish it was just some sort of artsy crop of a boxer.
Rockstar Baby gives me anxiety.
I don’t like that Lady Midnight mixes a script font with a serif. I think instead of a blur on the background it should have a color overlay with about like 50% opacity? I feel like the model looks a little too fierce for the love story described in the blurb but otherwise I think the cover is actually pretty solid, it’s just not all the way there yet.
If the guy is a rock star he probably plays ELECTRIC guitar, but that would be way too skinny for a baby to balance on.
I was thinking sloth for that guy’s pec, but I can see bear or definitely star-nosed mole.
Now I’m hoping there are books about sloth or star-nosed mole shifters … I rarely even read shifter books but I would totally check out those.
Bear shifter: We go into battle!
Wolf shifter: Totally ready to fight!
Sloth shifter: I’ll catch up … eventually. Or not.
The baby seems to be lying on a miniature bear skin rug, which is just another unnecessary layer of weird since it’s already lying on a guitar.
The woman on the last cover could absolutely help you kill someone and get away with it. I like that about her.
@Kris Bock I would totally read a sloth shifter book! I love my sloth to-do list notepad with sections like “to do after a nap” and “people to contact in due time”.
That unhurried vibe plus the mention of moles reminded me of The Wind in the Willows, where Mole is just done with adulting and runs off to float around in a boat on the river. Ahhh.
@Ellie re: Even without knowing what sea-lioning is, this is a pretty great insult.
Sea-lions are people who pop up in a discussion to Just Ask An Innocent Question except everyone including them knows they’re trying to get you to defend your right to exist. They’re common in certain genres of jackassery & thrive on “I am speaking calmly, you are acting upset, therefore I win.”
Origin of the term is a Wondermark webcomic strip where mentioning sea lions causes a sea lion to show up to Just Ask what problem you have with sea lions.
Mainsplaining sealioning turdblossoms is a lovely descriptor.