Let’s get ready to Cover Snark!
From Kathi: How does he have time to pirate when he spends most of his days at the gym and the rest of the time getting his body hair waxed and head styled?!
Sarah: That head was not originally attached to that body. I have doubts about the kilt, too.
Sneezy: The S-shape curve of the torso also looks very strange to me.
Elyse: Yeah I think that’s kyphosis and he might need a specialist.
Claudia: I didn’t know Outlander had a bobblehead. Although this is a strange one since head is smaller than the body.
Shana: With his elfin face, body builder body, and fetching kilt, Petey-boy will capture…your heart.
Carrie: Once again, we are here to point out that dehydration is nobody’s friend. Hydrate, buddy.
Elyse: IDK how male models and celebrities cut water. Dehydration is miserable. We don’t need your veins.
Sneezy: YOU need your veins though. Wouldn’t it be nice for them to NOT be shriveling up?
From Emily: I just can’t stop looking at this and trying to figure out if she’s got ridiculously double jointed (and disturbingly long) elbows or that’s supposed to be someone else’s hand on his cheek?
Amanda: That’s certainly not her hand.
It looks like a marionette.
Claudia: I’m thinking fake arm for dog/cat temperament test…
Elyse: It looks like a rawhide chewy to me.
Sarah: Is she holding a puppet hand? In her sleeves? Or she’s really really really tall and that arm is the only indication we get.
Shana: I was looking at API romance authors when Amazon recommended this.
Maya: OH NO
Shana: This is not a combo that screams romance to me, but apparently I’m wrong.
Maya: I was like, “is that….” [[[leans in]]] “STIRRUPS???????”
My ass cheeks are freezing, it must be love.
Shana: Everyone knows pelvic exams are sexy, Maya
Maya: Oh yeah, antiseptics, the special biohazard trash container for sharps, and the cold cold speculum, what else could a person with a vaginal canal ask for?
Claudia: The pseudonym of the author is icing on the cake… Enceinte, really?
Catherine: The icing on the cake, or the bun in the oven?
Sarah: Stay tuned for the sequel, “Scootch down, please.”
Amanda: Thankfully, there’s a new cover on Goodreads.
Tara: Sent to me by a friend.
Elyse: You know he’s really staring erotically at the cake.
Amanda: I thought it was a hamburger patty.
Shana: Are they levitating?
Catherine: I’m just thinking he must be super hot for her to be focused on kissing him when the cake is right there.
Sarah: THERE’S CAKE IN THE APOCALYPSE? The end of civilization includes CAKE??!
Please tell me more about this.
Sneezy: Are they keeping the cake for bargaining power? Eating it themselves? Are they the one around?
The Laird’s S is disturbing, he looks as if he’d snap in two in a strong wind.
I am also disturbed by both the hand on his face and the one on his shoulder, how is she getting her hand there (either there)?
No stirrups thank you. But I have to ask don’t your gynaecologists keep their speculums on the radiator?
Never mind the cake there is chocolate after the apocalypse? That is chocolate isn’t it … ?
Something about the Circles in Time cover reminds me of those SNL skits where Kristen Wiig had the tiny doll hands.
The dude on the Circles in Time cover reminds me of Antonio Sabato, Jr.
Also, when I saw the headline for this post, I assumed “stirrups” referred to the leggings with stirrups. This is so much worse. (Though, in fairness, the cover is pretty clear on what you’re getting: some sort of kinky doctor thing.)
I actually love that they gave Kilt Pirate a Barbie body with a 14-inch waist and 58-inch chest. Smash that double standard. Physically impossible proportions for everyone!
My big concern about the apocalypse was that there wouldn’t be bread. I did my sourdough thing a few years ago SPECIFICALLY to reassure myself that the survivors would be okay in the bread department as long as they prioritized growing and milling grain. Sourcing cocoa wasn’t even a stretch goal. (Because I’m bitchy about worldbuilding [among other things], I looked at the story in question. “Post-apocalyptic” is actually more misleading than that cover imagery. It is, at most, early-apocalyptic. They spend the night in a recently abandoned bakery, so it’s unlikely any of the 26 pages address the crucial issue of broken supply chains at the end of civilization as we know it.)
@Jazzlet: I used to work for an ob/gyn. Most doctors have switched to disposable plastic speculums, so no need to warm them. Also, those stirrups should have little socks on them, for both warmth & comfort (as if anything about a pelvic exam is comfortable).
Regardless, I can’t picture anything *remotely* sexy about a clinical meet-up that involves an exam table. As always, YMMV.
I think the woman on the Circles in Time cover might have weird, flowy sleeves instead of weird, too long arms.
There are some many things I don’t get about that cover. Is she levitating? It doesn’t look like he’s actually holding her up. And is that supposed to be her hand on his shoulder?
The pseudonym for the Speculum Romance is “Cybele Enceinte”??? As in, Cybele the great Anatolian mother goddess plus a word borrowed from French so we could have another euphemism for “pregnant”? ??????
Is no-one going to comment on the guy on the cover of the stirrup nightmare fuel cover looking vaguely like Viggo Mortensen? Because the idea this is someone’s RPF is creeping me out as much as anything. I like him and do not want him associated with this weirdness.
Also, seconded on the hydration! I don’t like many men, but when I do, I like ’em not about to faint from self-inflicted deprivation. (I do know a guy who is about that veiny when he’s not dehydrated and yes, they do like him at the blood donation drives. And he has a fella afaik, so I guess it’s not always unattractive.)
Wow, these are… wow. Each one amazing in its own special way.
The most baffling has to be Circles in Time though. Aside from the arm/sleeve situation, what is the blue fabric on the left? If it’s part of her dress, what happened to the middle part? Are there two women, perhaps from different timelines? That would explain so much. And which way is the wind blowing, because their hair makes no sense… is it a circular tornado type thing?
Obligatory: the cake is a lie.
(that’s prolly the mechanism of the apocalypse)
I can’t believe any woman would write that ob/gyn book. I could not be less turned on.
Well, guess who goofed. That comment was supposed to mention Sneezy’s wonderful line of:
Sneezy: YOU need your veins though. Wouldn’t it be nice for them to NOT be shriveling up?
And be complimenting it, but I dabbled in HTML beyond my ken and look what happened. Let that be a lesson to you, children.
I legit thought the OBGYN cover was an ad in the middle of the post and it took me a couple of scroll-ups to work out that it was the droid I was looking for. In amongst all of the other issues with it (and they are legion) it doesn’t look like a book to me at all.
Captured: Given the extreme narrowing from shoulder to waist, and the way his torso also appears to be undulating front to back, might he perhaps be a snake from the hips down?
Doctor’s Special Patient: Perhaps this is written for people with a gynecologist kink? That’s probably a thing.
Sweet Escape: He’d better have some impressive skills if he wants her to share the last chocolate cake to survive the apocalypse.
About the Pirate Laird’s face… surely that is Sam Heughan’s face photoshopped on the eerie and disturbing neck and torso?
Captured by the Pirate Laird: Now, now, bitches. That S-curved torso only looks odd because you’re not accustomed to the Health Corset (really) of the 1890s. As an infant, his parents must have put him in an experimental prototype model. Otoh I am truly stumped about his wrist. Did they have to photoshop out a wristwatch? and if so, please say the plot specifically refers to his left-handedness.
Circles in Time: My first reaction was: Is this Old Skool Retro Week and nobody told me? But then I saw the series title “timeswept” and realized it refers to the cover illustrator’s unexpected trip into a prior decade.
The Doctor’s Special Patient: So many possible interpretations, so few that won’t get his license revoked at best, hard time at worst. And if that’s the series, and Cybele Enceinte is the individual title in the form {name of goddess} + {french term for condition}, who’s the author? (I typed this before seeing the post from @Star, whose mind clearly worked along similar lines.)
Sweet Escape: Er, submitter, that’s not a romance novel. It’s a chocolate cookbook and I WANT IT. (Option B: There was a Dystopian YA Book contest on the theme of “create a post-apocalyptic world that retains just one thing to make life living and prevent the masses from rising up”.)
Circles in Time is disappointing for the weird arm. Otherwise I would kind of love it because it seems so rare to have the woman in the “power” position on a cover. Usually she’s the one kneeling at his feet or pressing her face awkwardly against his torso or whatever.
Circles in Time: that’s a praying mantis arm!
The Doctor’s Special Patient is the hardest I’ve ever laughed at a Cover Snark contribution. I think it was the shock of realizing those are stirrups!!! This was a good batch – the tiny head, the long, white, unattached arm, the levitating head plus cake in the bed. Made my morning.
@hng23 As usual, I have a story. About a man who fantasized about a medical woman and a table. Sadly, we could not access an actual exam table. Sadly, due to our substitution of a less safe table, someone ended up with a surgery. Do not recommend. Pretty sure I would not recommend with the actual table, either. And, no, I have no interest in checking that book out. The cover is traumatizing.
@Vicki: Adding insult to literal injury, I laughed, even though I shouldn’t have. I hope ‘someone’ has had a full recovery; perhaps the fantasy could be acted out in the safety of a regular bed, but with props -NOT a speculum!- & some imagination. (A stethoscope & a white coat might go a long way.)
I think that’s the physique you get from battling Krakens.
Circles in Time was published in 1997 with that cover. The male model is John DeSalvo. I know because I collected his covers way back when he was modeling and it’s on my bookshelf right now. So it’s not “retro” as in someone trying to copy a previous time but is actually legitimately retro as being from a previous time.
Since it’s a time travel set in 13th century England, I believe that is the long, wide medieval dress sleeve wafting back. I agree that it looks pretty strange.
While I would not read “Scootch down, please”, agree on the title!
The woman’s arm on Circles in Time has a MINIMUM of 2 elbows and you cannot convince me otherwise!
I’m afraid that the first thing that the Special Patient is going to hear from that doctor will be “Re-laaaaaax!”
Circles in Time–what’s going on with her dress?
I read Scootch down as Scotch down, and thought, well, yeah she’d need a scotch to get comfortable in the stirrups. I hope there’s consent.
Who puts cake on a fabric rag? Perhaps it’s a ring ding someone drizzled extra fudge coating on?
Maybe it was boiled in cloth like a Christmas pudding?
@hng23, no speculum involved – the table used had some wood parts. There were splinters in someone’s personal body part that required a special surgery. Yes, he is healed now. And happily married for a number of years (not to me).