Can you believe it? It’s our first Cover Snark of 2022!
From LM
Elyse: No
Sarah: I have. No words. None. None words.
Elyse: I refuse.
Maya: Can I just say that kerning hurts my feelings more than the collection of haunted dolls, I mean children.
Elyse: It’s book 9, you guys. There are 8 more of these.
It’s like a haunted regency mannequin bonanza
Claudia: OMG I’m going to have nightmares!
Sneezy: NOOOOOOOO!!!! IT WASN’T ME!!!!! WHATEVER IT WAS I DIDN’T DO IT!!!!! MERCY!!!!! MERCY!!!!! GET THEM AWAY FROM MEE!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
From Leah: There is much confused staring at this one, I guess the priest collar is impervious to being ripped open.
Elyse: It looks like someone is standing behind him like those aren’t his arms.
Sarah: The perspective is really odd, isn’t it?
I’m impressed with the alignment that allows his nipples to look at the title.
Lara: I’m a little sketchy on religious detail, but aren’t priests supposed to take a vow of poverty?
Sarah: Maybe the thing that makes him a billionaire is his exclusive use of the metal that’s holding his collar on despite the rest of his shirt yielding to his rather tiny T-Rex arms?
Tara: According to his face, he’s wondering whose arms those are.
Catherine: That shirt ripping move looks so wrong with a priest’s collar. And yeah, billionaire priests? I don’t think so.
But also, is he a billionaire werewolf priest? Because the pattern of chest hair is really weird! Super furry pecs and no hair on his abdomen? It looks very odd.
If he’s mid-transformation that would excuse the shirt ripping, though….
Sneezy: He should start with the collar then!!!! At this rate he’ll get the Darwin Award before the Vatican boots him out.
Elyse: I don’t know what’s worse, the dragon is the way his head looks glued on
Sneezy: It’ll be a while before anything can compare to Mr Four Arms, but this is so annoyingly blah
And my knee jerk reaction is the dragon, but then I notice Knock-off Ken
Tara: So is the dragon coming out of his butt? Or is he half man, half fire dragon, but it’s a top half for both of them?
Lara: Also who exactly is the traitor in this scenario?
Sneezy: The nipples
They’re clearly trying to pop off and start their own dragon butt colony
Catherine: I’ve heard of dragon breath, but dragon farts must be absolutely lethal…
Elyse: Fisher has dragon farts, 100%
He can clear a room
Smell mah farts
Susan: This cover on its own is just “eh” but I thought the title said ballerina
A ballerina prince is WAY more interesting
Carrie: Same and agree. Also he looks a little like a discount Keanu Reeves so now I want to watch a made-for-netflix garbage movie called The Ballerina Prince’s Girlfriend starring Keanu Reeves as famous retired ballet dancer looking for love.
Susan: Take my money!
Sneezy: WANT!!!!!!!!
AJ: A) do want and B) glad I’m not the only one who saw Keanu Reeves
Amanda: Sometimes the snark is the awesome plots you missed out along the way.
Creepy Regency Sims with font issues, followed by hot (billionaire?) priest, followed by dragon shifter Ken doll who may be channeling Henry Cavill—all leading to a grand finale where someone who is one-third Keanu, one-third Tom Ellis from LUCIFER, and one-third Aidan Turner from POLDARK is trying to hide his billionaire identity by wearing a cheap (or is it just too small?) cardigan or sweater vest under his suit jacket. Why does he need a fake girlfriend for this undercover assignment? Said fake girlfriend should be mad that she is mentioned prominently but not seen!
The Bitchery knows I’m always there for a priest romance, so—despite that terrifying “torso face” cover—I had to investigate and check out BILLIONAIRE’S SINS on Amazon. The blurb includes these immortal words:
He’s the hot priest.
I am a belly dancer.
And, apparently, there’s a love-triangle element. Plus, it’s available through KU. Did I download it? Yes, yes I did. Am I ashamed? Never!!
The little blue dragon icon on the cover of THE TRAITOR reminds me that a) don’t ever put something where a dude’s dick would be and b) makes me think that his penis is going to be super small like they are on Greek statues.
I will never understand Waldock’s cover choices–they undermine her writing so much. The Poland series is… even weirder.
Ah, great start for a new year of cover snarks! I love them all for their horribleness.
Also confused by the priest’s chest hair. It’s like he walked out halfway through his wax appointment. Probably wanted to protect his nipples.
That first one … some people should have their Photoshop licenses revoked.
Julia’s Journey: The dolls are terrifying, and why does Julia look so alarmed? Is this Regency horror? The carriage looks like a toy also.
Billionaire’s: Weird shirt ripping. Churches don’t pay enough for priests to be billionaires, although I suppose if he was a billionaire before his calling, at least he’d be able to pay off seminary/div school (they said bitterly).
Traitor: Why is his torso extremely wide/bulgy and then tiny? Is he wearing an invisible corset?
Billionaire Prince: He should be able to afford a well made vest/waistcoat that doesn’t gap between the buttons. Also, wearing a shirt that matches the flowers in the 2nd floor window boxes is not effective camouflage.
Knock off Keanu cover makes me think of those cheap direct-to-DVD movies that look almost like the real thing but the font isn’t right and two words in the title have been changed.
Like, if you squint you could mistakenly pick this one up cause you thought you were getting Keanu as a retired Russian ballet master (yes please!) and not cover model in TJMaxx separates as wannabe billionaire (snooze)
Weirded out by Julia’s Journey to Uncanny Valley.
Weirded out nearly as much by Reverend Hairy Pecs.
I was hoping the sinning billionaire was the heroine…but not sure that belly dancing is that lucrative
What kerning problems? She was born in a decade where gratuitously stupid names were trendy, and her parents named her SarahJ. But were it not for follow-up posts, I would have thought her surname was Waldook, which sounds rather like one of those inexplicable hobgoblins associated with some small, isolated region of central Europe.
Off-topic: I will be happy if I never again read a story in which Our Hero wants a woman who will Love Him For Himself and therefore conceals all evidence of his wealth. Uh, dude, your billionairity is an essential part of yourself. If you don’t like it, write a very large check to Physicians Without Borders and never look back.
+1 on Ballerina Prince. Gimme.
No, actually priests don’t take a vow of poverty unless they are members of religious orders. A billionaire priest, while unlikely, is not an impossibility.
Julia’s Journey looks like someone made that cover using The Sims game. Like The Sims Regency Expansion Pack (doesn’t exist, YET).
Keanu could totally be a ballerina. John Wick was “adopted” by the Ruska Roma Ballet company, and probably learned some moves there.
Can’t call it which cover is the worst, but you all had me in stitches – perfect start of the first Cover Snark! And yes, I want to see that film too…
@DDD – I had a look too but noped out after reading the blurb. It sounds even more bonkers than I had assumed! But if you do read it, I hope you’ll let us know about it ;-).
I thought the undressing priest looked like someone doing improv with the arms belonging to the person hidden behind him.
Also think that is the scariest dolls Julia is bringing on her journey.
Thanks to everyone who mentioned Keanu’s sweater vest. I think that bothered me the most out of all of these. I still shudder at all the time/effort I put into pinning/taping those gaps on my suit blouses. (I’m busty so they *always* gapped, regardless of size/cut/brand.) This should have been easy to fix on a male model.
That Regency cover! I feel like the uncanny valley is now a whole lot uncannier.
Who looks at the final proof of the Julia’s Journey cover and says “Oh yeah, that’s it, that’s the one!” for a heartwarming romance novel with a found family theme? (Yeah, I looked up the blurb)
Also I am dying at “Tiny T-Rex arms” So funny cuz it’s true.
I needed that laugh. But am traumatized by Julia’s Journey to Mannequin land.
Never mind Billionaire Priest’s arms – there’s no way that’s his own torso. That torso wouldn’t even fit in the cassock, unless the cassock is an interdimensional portal to the Dimension of Writhing Abs.
How reassuring that Julia has found an honest job stocking the Children’s Wear section of a 1960s department store with mannequins. If they were actual children I would be concerned by Julia’s appearance, which suggests more ‘madam of brothel’ than ‘kindly charity worker’.
(I went looking for images of 1960s and 1950s child mannequins, but I’m not going to trust my html skills enough to post any links. Do feel free to visit that uncanny rabbit hole valley yourself, though.)
@Carol S, as an (amateur) belly dancer, I can tell you if anyone in this industry is a billionaire, it’s because they inherited money/won the lottery/married a hot billionaire priest.
Also, I guess I am going to have to buy and read Billionaire’s Sins, so I can review it on my dance blog. *sigh* the things I do for clicks.
Regarding Julia’s Journey, aside from the full frontal horribility of those mannequins, did anyone else notice that the bashful dolly in the carriage has a goatee and frowny human eyes? Also, is that a mullet lurking under her mob cap?
My dreams will now be haunted by that Julia’s Journey Cover.
If I am not mistaken, the billionaire priest cover is a much used(and much reported) stock photo from Michael Stokes.
Julia’s Journey: made in Sims 4. They have terrible choice in CC. And pose packs, for that matter.
Fake Keanu’s pocket square even looks a bit like a ballerina slipper!
Ok, I took one for the team here, but after spending my lunch break doing a skim of BILLIONAIRE’S SINS, I must regretfully tell everyone not to bother. To say this ain’t in the same league as Sierra Simone’s PRIEST is putting it mildly! However, it started off in a surprisingly-not-terrible way with the heroine upset that her father is about to marry her late mother’s best friend (only a few months after the mother’s death). Ok, thinks I, some decent family conflict, maybe—despite the clunky prose and a lot of tell-don’t-show—this won’t be so bad. Alas, it was downhill from there: the 19-year-old heroine later sees the hero-priest swimming and spends plenty of time rhapsodizing about his “package” (a teenage “size queen”—can’t say that didn’t make me feel a bit icked-out). Then the priest—who has “never felt this way about a woman before”—falls into insta-lust with the heroine. It was around this point that I figured “L. Steele” is most likely a Kindle Unlimited conglomerate name and that the story would continue on in a fashion that one expects from the KU Farm. So, Michael Stokes cover image (I daresay somewhat cropped from the original, if my experience with original-Stokes-images-versus-covers is anything to go by) or not, I cannot recommend BILLIONAIRE’S SINS, but YMMV.
@DiscoDollyDeb if you think of it give us a report on The Billionaire’s Sins…I’m really hoping those aren’t his arms and they are the arms of his super hot priest Dom but perhaps I’ve just reread The Sinners too many times! LOL
Julia’s Journey’s cover reminds me of those very creepy photographs of dead kinds in the 1800s. Just google “photos of dead kids 1800s”
Billionaire’s Sins: May I mention how shocked I am to see a priest disrobing in the Cathedral. And I certainly hope for the sake of his immortal soul that he is not a Roman Catholic priest who takes a vow of celibacy. Episcopalians do not take such a vow, however, they are, if unmarried, supposed to be chaste.
About The Traitor: there is something seriously wrong about the ratio of his shoulders and his waist.
Billionaire Prince’s Fake Girlfriend. There are too many colors in this cover that jar against each other, IMO. ALso I would pay good money to see Keanu as a retired ballerina.
I just want to say thank goodness for cover snark. Having a rather awful afternoon and just found this in my inbox. Still awful, but with amusing parts now.
@TheOtherAJ, you had me in stitches, with the things you do for clicks.
If I might say, Traitorous Nipples sounds like a great(?!) title for a long-running “series,” inspired — perhaps a bit — by “Chuck Tingle.” And this is precisely the crowd to do it, because inconsistency and retconning would be part of the meme…
Either that or it’s a neopunk band with even worse-than-usual musicianship. That’s the treason (“We took your money and we make Johnny Rotten sound good! HAHAHAHAHAH!”).
Keanu cover vibes for the win!
My first Cover Snark article and I am LMAO. I will have nightmares about those creepy doll-children. The hot priest? Yeah, weird chest hair, weird nipples, and why is he tearing off his shirt in the first place? Is he possessed? Got an itch he just has to scratch right now? Just really overheated? IDK. And yes, #3 has the ken-doll plasticky look. Love the kitty-cat. He’s adorable and so fluffy! And finally, the Keanu wanna-be. Could he be wearing any more clothes? He does have his smolder going for him but he’s got nothing on Flynn Ryder.
Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all year!