Happy Halloween, everyone! What better way to celebrate than with some Cover Snark!
From Kris B: I’ve been trying to figure out why this woman’s pose disturbs me so much. She is clearly facing away, and her right arm could twist back that much. But my brain wants to say she’s facing forward. Just me?
Sarah: Definitely not just you – the proportions on that right (??) arm are very distracting.
I mean, it should make sense but it does…not.
Elyse: Is her arm on backwards?
Amanda: Is she smuggling chess pieces beneath her dress?
Hoo more weird hands from Karen H: For Cover Snark, I recommend Lady of Fortune by Ellie St. Clair. I like the color of her dress but her right hand is giving me the creeps. The little finger is so short it looks like it’s not all there, and what I thought was a regular finger due to its length is apparently the thumb peeking through the first two fingers. However, it is as long as the regular fingers. I tried to make my thumb look like that and couldn’t.
Sarah: Yeah something odd happened there. Also I thought that was Hailey Bieber for a minute.
Amanda: The hand quandary gives me vibes of those optical illusion photos of, “is it a duck or an old woman?”
From Darlynne: The guy looks familiar but I’m very…confused.
Sarah: This is… something.
Claudia: I’m so confused…I think the photo booth ran out of props.
Elyse: This is like someone lost a bet.
From Pam G: Aside from the large presumably human infant and the mysterious sparkly green fumes, this is kinda pedestrian for CS, except that in grilling season all I can think of as I gaze at his shoulder is St Lawrence, Cuz he’s definitely done on that side. Either that of he forgot sunscreen under the chainmail.
Tara:
Sarah: All I can see is TCHAIKOVSKY and I’m not able to get past that part.
Tara: Yes, same!!!
And who is Tchaikovsky? Is it the man? The baby? The lens flare?
Sarah: Maybe one of the planets is Tchaikovsky.
Tara: Maybe it’s a Spartacus situation and all of the above is Tchaikovsky.
Sarah: Ooooh maybe!
Shana: The baby is Tchaikovsky. His nipple is Tchaikovsky. Aren’t we all a little Tchaikovsky?
Amanda: Can’t wait to see that on a wooden board in Home Goods
“Live. Laugh. Tchaikovsky.”
Carrie: Get that skin condition looked at, buddy!
Does he have mastitis? Cause that’s kinda what it feels like.
On the LEE cover, not only is her elbow bending backwards (ouch) but that arm looks a foot longer than the other.
Re: Lady Elinor’s Escape (Chess Dress): I think part of the visual disconnect is that the dress looks like it’s backward. When I first saw it, it took me a good few seconds to realise that she was facing away. It looks like a scoop necked dress with a ribbon accent, which when combined with the arm, could be a forward facing pose. It’s like they took the picture facing forward to get the swooshy dress effect and then photoshopped the pose to be facing away in post production.
I have seen at least 5 “men gazing down at the front of their torso while not wearing shirts” covers this month.
Every time I think of this monthly column.
@Jill
Spinal cleavage, amirite?
Re: Tchaikovsky
First time I saw it, all I could do was wince at that shoulder; now I look at it and think “We’ve been stefanoviched.”
@C R: that pose is called “the oiled-up look-down”, but generally speaking there’s no baby involved.
Behold “BEANEATH” in big red letters on the cover:
https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Blood-Moon-Alliance-Vampires-ebook/dp/B00FI9JJBO/
My brain tried really hard to make it “beaneater,” which, yanno, I’ve seen weirder protagonists…
The man on the Deep Midnight cover looks like a bouncer of a seedy club. One with a sticky floor and cheap beer.
The Deep Midnight lady’s expression seems to say “I told him it was a costume party. Look at his smug face thinking he’s clever after he showed up in the same black t-shirt he wears every day and is trying to pass it off as modern vampire. It will look more realistic once I add a few real blood stains.”
The thing that always puzzles me about cover snark is that someone would do all the work to write a book and then think, “Ooh an anatomically impossible cover or a photo where the cover models still have red eye from the flash is REALLY going to represent my work and sell this book!”
Is that baby smirking or leering? Either way, it’s creepy.
@PamG YES, exactly!
A house I lived in had wallpaper like the pattern on Tchaikovsky’s front. It was really ugly wallpaper.
All I could think when I saw the Tchaikovsky cover was, why is there a penis underneath that baby? Took me a minute to figure out that it was baby leg? and a lower arm hidden by some unfortunate green galaxy/explosion stuff.
@Sarah: I cannot get past Tchaikovsky either.
I mean, all the other alien baby covers have inured me to their strangeness, but … but … Tchaikovsky?!
Also, Deep Midnight’s cover looks like the photographer ran out of money and/or time to hire models, so in desperation he grabbed a couple relatives and forced them into the shoot.
Also also, I was looking at Lady Elinor’s Escape for the first time, and I was thinking, “Well, that’s not *so* bad … is that supposed to be blood down the back of her gown, no, no, that’s just the ribbons, alright, we can live with that, what exactly is so bad about this cover – AAAAAGH NO NO NO THE ARM THE ARM NO WRONGBAD ARMS SHOULD NOT BEND THAT WAY.”
$100 says Deep Midnight is the author and her SO.
Also, it’s the shoulder blade cleavage. The first cover would more a lot more sense if they changed/removed the shading.
My first impression of Lady Elinor was that she was lifting the back of her skirts to moon the chess pieces. Oh thank goodness, it’s just a shawl! (Cue the arm horror.)
It looks like the photographer for Deep Midnight couldn’t fit the guy’s whole head in the cover frame, so he just squished it vertically in Photoshop to make it fit. Also, the guy’s smirk makes me think he’s about to let go and drop that woman just for the LOLZ.
And — Tchaikovsky? We said we wanted a ballet, not a baby. Also, the mer part of merman is NOT the arm. Or were you just practicing your scales?
For me, the oddest part of the Lady of Fortune cover is the dress—specifically, the exposed lacing up the back. Did the back of her dress mysteriously fall apart, exposing her corset? Did she get halfway undressed, only to change her mind and walk away? Isn’t her expression rather blasé for such a massive wardrobe malfunction/interrupted tryst? I know I’m not usually that calm when my entire dress is about to fall off in a garden, even without anyone around!
This is one reason why I can’t read historicals anymore—the clothes bother me way more than the plot holes!
These two seem to have photoshopped appendages:
Lady Elinor and her ghosty raised lower arm.
Lady of Fortune appears to have someone else’s hand or fingers?
Deep Midnight looks like some random couple that ended up on Jerry Springer decades ago.
Tchaikovsky… with the baby’s expression, I think think we know where all the gas bubbles/sparkles came from.
Isn’t Shannon Drake / Heather Graham a real bestseller? Like she has sold millions of books over a respected decades long career getting a lifetime a achievement RWA award and one would think would understand how to market books? What is with Deep Midnight or Beaneath a Blood Red Moon? Does she not have an assistant, agent, editors of her current releases, ANYONE who looked at those covers and suggested maybe something better??
If you could make your arm bend back like Lady Elinor, you’d have spinal cleavage too. And possibly shoulder dislocation?
Lady of Fortune should use some of it to buy a dress that goes all the way around her body and meets at the back seam.
They never stop. In my email today, an ad for this one. I am not sure where he is staring, as he is wearing jeans. Maybe he has Taylor Swift’s mean scale? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZJNZVN7