Cover Snark: No Fires in the Library, Please

Happy Cover Snark Monday!

Shadow Beast Shifters Rejected by Jaymin Eve. A man and woman are both on fire in a study or library. She is wrapped around him, legs around his waist and his arms are outstretched to the sides.

From Dee: His arms and whatever happened to his hands is scary enough but if you only look at the thumbnails, you wonder where her second arm went. I’m also not sure if he’s a vampire or just sniffing her hair in a REALLY creepy way. Enjoy.

Amanda: Look ma, no hands.

Sarah: Wheeeeeeee!

Also, if you’re going to flaming firebang, go for it, but maybe not near so many books?

Sneezy: Oof!!! Insta turn off

“Hey, baybee~ Let’s- YOU WANT TO WHAT??? I’M NOT FUCKING A BOOK BURNER!!!!!!”

Also, to my presently Fullmetal Alchemist saturated brain, I take one look at that and think, “…Homunculi.”

Fated Binds by S.J. Hayes. Wow. How to describe this. It's blurry, first off, and the curly font makes the title nearly impossible to read. There's a woman kneeling on maybe a bed covered in water. It looks like there's a figure behind her, but all we see is a tuft of white hair next to her head.

From Jen M: I came across this book and immediately thought of Cover Snark. There are so many things wrong with this cover that I don’t even know where to start. Plus that title – what does it even mean?

Amanda: That’s hair. Not a pompom. That’s hair? I think that’s hair. Maybe it’s Fated Bangs, and his are the question for fate?

Tara: I see Fated Bings.

via GIPHY

Sarah: LOLOL

Or Fated Binge. Which is what I did with the bread I made.

Tara: Oh yes. That’s why I don’t make bread. I would binge that fate too.

Carrie: What are Fated Bines? That’s what I see.

Catherine: Apparently it’s Fated Binds. This book is too romantic for grammar.

I’m interested in the X Ray jaw behind them. And that there seems to be text saying ‘Smile’.

I am also concerned that the hero’s head has been replaced by a pom-Pom. Though since I was initially concerned that he had no head, I guess that’s a step up.

Lara: The photoshopping of the woman’s legs also seems… a little off?

This really is the cover that keeps on giving.

Sneezy: I see Fated Biyds…

Which reminds me of names where people stick in random letters to escape being basic.

This font is like a Rorschach test, isn’t it?

faints on fainting couch

Doctor, what’s wrong with me?

Oh!!! She has a humanoid person behind her. For a second there I thought she was some kind of human centipede

EllenM: I see “fated bimps”

Shana: It took me a full minute to realize that was his head, and not a giant rosette in her hair.

Tough Love by Melanie A. Smith. A shirtless, headless man in sweatpants is holding two dumbbells right next to his crotch.

From Kelly: I am nominating a book for cover snark. I have read this site for years and my favorite posts are always cover snark. When I saw this cover, it stopped me in my tracks with its sheer lunacy and I knew I had to share.

Sarah: I understand what happened here crop-wise, and the end result looks like his sweatpants, or possibly his bladder, are lifting weights from the inside.

Tara: To me, it looks like they’re growing out of his hips, which makes me wonder if the pants go on like Raphael’s shirts in the Guild Hunter series.

Amanda: The O on Love isn’t doing that belly button any favors

Lara: All I’m getting from this cover is Frankenstein’s monster, crotch edition

Catherine: Oh no, what is even going on? Why does he have dumbells in his pants? Is he doing ball-strengthening exercises? And more importantly, who decided that drawstrings are sexy?

(Andrew just came in and commented that either he has balls of steel or a MASSIVE piercing. I’m sure we are supposed to think something is massive, but I don’t know that ‘piercing’ is what they were going for.)

King by Shantel Davis. A black and white cover. A man is smoking. His arms and shoulders heavily tattooed and he's reaching his arm behind him to try and get the middle of his back.

Shana: I can’t stop staring at this.

What is going on with his arm?

Sarah: All of his shoulders are oddly photographed. All nine of them.

Amanda: Maybe he has one of those itches like right in the small of his back and he’s ready to dislocate a shoulder to get it.

Elyse: It’s not a love story, guys. It’s a fucking story

Amanda: I didn’t realize they were mutually exclusive.

Sarah: Yeah, a “that fucking itch on the inside of my shoulder blade” story.

Tara: Tattoo healing gets real itchy.

Lara: Is that… a rosary in his hand?

Shana: See, he needs the rosary to hold the fractured pieces of his arm together.

Sneezy: THIS fucking story has been approved by the POPE!!!!

Comments are Closed

  1. OuchOuchOuch says:

    For “Rejected” – that position, that’s how you throw your lower back out, beast shifter or no beast shifter. He’s already got a weird ding in his ribs on the left side where her hand is.

    The cover, and the grammar, of “Fated Binds”makes my face hurt. That Spike has sunk so low.

  2. Kit says:

    All I can think of of the rejected cover is how many knots are in her hair after thrashing it about like that.

    Fated binds (I read bines, by the way) I didn’t see the man at first! They look like a pair of dancers in Eurovision. Something that the poor woman dressed as the hand wished she could have been!

  3. Kit says:

    Also the blurb for the King Novelette (it’s 100 pages) tells absolutely nothing about what it’s about. My guess some MC/mafia dark romance?

  4. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    You’ll never convince me that’s not Amy Winehouse’s face on the FATED BINDS cover. Also, someone needs to alert them that their waterbed is leaking.

  5. Sandra says:

    At first glance, I thought King had a pet octopus sitting on his shoulder.

  6. Ren Benton/Lena Brassard says:

    As much as I love to say “manual kerning is your friend,” there are some typeface mountains too great for that friend to surmount. I spend more time on typography than the image because people should to be able to READ WORDS, ffs.

  7. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    Slightly o/t, but regarding religious iconography on MC romance covers: rosaries, crosses, and crucifixes often adorn the cover models and many of the character names (which can also be book titles) have a religious meaning. I’ve seen characters/titles like PRIEST, REVEREND, DEACON, CHURCH, SAINT, and the always popular SINNER. It’s interesting, considering that most MC romances are dark and full of triggers, how often religious references pop up.

  8. FashionablyEvil says:

    Oh, the Fated Bines cover was confusing me so much that I was like, “well, I can’t even figure out the the title, so it seems plausible that that’s a large loofah next to her head…”

    And agree, her legs look odd—the upper thigh (which should be the widest part of her leg) is thinner than her knee.

  9. Bagel says:

    Everything about Fated Binus cracks me up. Where is her other arm? Is there faint writing on the grey pillow behind them? Who approved this cover?

  10. Empress of Blandings says:

    EEeeee, there is so much going on with Fated Biyes. The typeface of painful incomprehension. The strange hairy yellow rosette (perhaps marking third prize in Photoshop for Beginners?) And the legs. She’s got hotdogs instead of thighs. They’re kneeling down so we probably should be able to see some of their lower legs and feet, so… where are their feet? There’s something that looks like a disembodied hand that’s wandered in to see what’s going on but it just has no idea and frankly neither do I.

  11. Ren Benton/Lena Brassard says:

    The Fated Biyes people look like an illustration that was stolen from an 80s historical/maybe category romance cover and horribly photoshopped to meet the current needs. Her face has that scan-of-a-40-year-old-paperback look. The person who painted that face and the person responsible for those “legs” are not the same individual.

  12. LisaM says:

    It’s a dreary rainy Monday morning at work, and sneaking back to chortle at the comments is getting me through it.

  13. Musette says:

    Rough Monday Made Better by Cover Snark. Thank you! ‘Tough Love’ – guy that size should be curling those weights with his pinky fingers, no veining. ‘Fated Bings’ – I would’ve gone to the mat, fighting for that to be a cabbage (I didn’t even realize that was another person until the comments)

    and what is MC? I see it referenced here quite a bit, can’t figure it out – tia! xoxo

  14. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    @Musette: Motorcycle Club (sometimes MG for Motorcycle Gang) romance. A bit of an acquired taste (but Kati Wilde’s Hellfire Riders series is primo) and usually very dark and triggery.

  15. Jazzlet says:

    Musette MC = Motorcycle Club

    As well as the water bed on Fated Bings leaking she seems to be a lot heaier than he, which is odd with the visual size difference being the other way.

  16. Jazzlet says:

    Damn, that should read “she sseems to be a lot heavier …”

  17. Jazzlet says:

    I give up.

  18. Kareni says:

    How on earth does Mr Tough Love change his pants?!

  19. Musette says:

    @DiscoDollyDeb & Jazzlet – thanks! I’m a rider (H-D Road King and Ducati) but not a fan of MCs so I’ll pass on those MC books. Love reading books where there are women riders, though. I just read a not too bad book (I talked about it in Part2 WAYR – the Assassins one) – and the Heroine is a POC doctor who rides and has NO problem having the H kill her stalker! Loved that (I’ve been stalked – it ain’t funny).

  20. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    @Musette: Not to hijack the thread, but Kati Wilde’s JACK AND LILY series consists of three novellas featuring a fully patched-in female club member. She’s totally bad-ass. For a more demure female rider, Anne Calhoun’s THE SEAL’S REBEL LIBRARIAN is about a recently-divorced woman getting her groove back by dating a younger man and learning to ride a motorcycle.

  21. EC Spurlock says:

    I’d reject that guy too if he set my books on fire. That’s the LEAST I would do.

    I did not even realize there was more than one person on Fated Biyes/Binges. And is she wearing a purple flag on top?

    The way the hand and arm tattoos work, at first glance I thought King was being attacked by the Alien.

  22. Cyranetta says:

    You mean the whatever-it=is on “King’s” shoulder ISN’T an octopus? What is it, then?

  23. Karen H near Tampa says:

    What bothers me about the “King” cover is the totally unnecessary cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It screams lazy author/art person since it seems to be shorthand for “bad ass dude” even though the rest of the cover does a perfectly adequate job of showing that. What really bothers me, however, is that cigarettes are appearing more and more on covers and since cover models are usually attractive people, we seem to be returning to the 60s when ad agencies hyped smoking by showing pretty people doing it. We shouldn’t be normalizing such a destructive behavior (if it was just self-destructive, then whatever, but secondhand smoke is a real danger to others).
    I agree that the graphic shirt is a bit confusing but at least it’s not a totally fake tattoo (another common cover fail).

  24. LML says:

    @ Empress of Blandings, I was thinking her legs look like canned Vienna Sausages before I got to your comment.

  25. Alexa Daniels says:

    Fated whatever… looks like some weird hybrid vegetable on his head. cabbage & cauliflower?

  26. Dee says:

    Thank you for using me submission. It was a highlight of my day! The first time I saw the cover I knew I had to submit it. There was so much going on I don’t know how I missed the pain of the burning books.

    Ah Fated Binps. That’s what I see and that’s what I’m going with. I thought that was one hell of a blond mushroom or some sort of portal next to her head, not another person. And the ghost fangs…um sure. Plus her legs look like two fingers in a V formation.

    Tough love…is the actual representation of putting the screws to someone. I can’t think it’s pleasurable though.

    And King…is that some funky ass stairwell tattoo or is someoneusing his body as a movie projection screen?

  27. Kris says:

    The dude in Fated Bines is a head of lettuce. Seriously that’s all I see.

  28. denise says:

    Fated Binds couple are bound by the purple pashmina?

  29. J.A. Miller says:

    If you love the Cover Snark feature as I do I highly recommend a leisurely perusal of the meticulously curated collections in the (now) virtual Museum of Bad Art. It is advisable not to drink any beverages while viewing the artwork on display or reading the interpretative texts.

    http://museumofbadart.org/collections/

  30. Louise says:

    Dang! Just once in my life I would like to remember that Monday is Cover Snark Day.

    Rejected: I was going to say: Sorry, cover, you won’t make the Finals–you’re rejected, haha–because it only uses one font. And then I realized that the author’s name and the book title are just different enough (note the descending R and J, the low-waisted E) that instead I can say: FFS, designer, why didn’t you just use the same font throughout? And I want to see the out-of-shot third person who is throwing the books. (Insert “throw the book at them” witticism.) Clearly Our Heroine knows them well, going by the look on her face.

    Fated Illegible Scrawls: Who is Grigori, and why does he need a guardian? Should we expect a Free Grigori movement in some future volume? And yes: How can anyone be expected to guess what the title means, when nobody can even make out what it says?

    Tough Love: They may be meant for weights, but to me they look like a pair of oversized bolts. And where you have gigantic bolts, you must also have a pair of gigantic …
    Never mind. I’ll let myself out.

    King: I swear that crown is the logo for some cheesy chain motel. How often do they replace the mattresses? Do they have non-smoking rooms?

  31. Cristiane C Young says:

    Fated Bings guy’s head is ornamental kale.

  32. batgirl says:

    Honest to deity, I thought King guy was a squid shifter.
    Also I am pretty sure that’s not how you keep a cigarette in your mouth. It’s gonna fall onto his presumed abs.

  33. TMary says:

    “Filted Bines”? “Farted Bings”? Ah, no, “Fated Binds”. Well, that does make slightly more sense.

    Also, “King” is the first time I’ve ever seen a censored book cover.

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