Welcome back to Cover Snark!
From PamG: Soooo creeeepy.
Sarah: I very very very dislike the faceless illustrated covers. Gives me the creepys. The DOG has a face, for crying out loud.
Elyse: Aside from missing faces, she looks like she’s missing a third of her lower body.
Sarah: The angle/proportion is very wrong agreed.
Amanda: I’m reminded of the Thumb guys from the Spy Kids movie.
Sarah: shudder
Sneezy: Nope. Fuck you. Yeet.
Shana: Maybe it’s just me but I am very distracted by her hairline. It looks like she left the manic panic on too long and it dyed her forehead.
Sarah: Oh gosh, that fuzzy line is very distracting in an otherwise solid cover! Looking at it makes me itchy!
Sneezy: I’m seeing this cover after several earthquakes chased me out of my room, and all the pinks and reds just look too much like lava and magma right now.
From Darlynne: I know real wolves run on the lean side, but this guy needs an exorcism, because something is hiding in there.
Sarah: He’s a snack. Literally. For that wolf. He’s dinner.
He looks so…tired, poor thing.
Sneezy: Yeah, he looks so done. If I had the night he looks like he had, I’d be done too. I make the same face when I know I’ll need to wash aaaaaall my linens if I get in bed right now but just can’t scrape together the spoons to turn on the shower.
I relate to the wolves too. I make the same face when I’ve realized I walked into a shit restaurant and will be stuck paying for a TERRIBLE soup I can make EXPONENTIALLY better myself.
Amanda: Real “we saw you from across the bar and like your vibe” vibes
Sarah: EXTREME levels of those vibes. And you know they’re both surrounded by competing clouds of cologne.
Sneezy: And that’s why book boyfriends are easier. I can happily fall into the safe world of monster porn instead of googling how to scrub out my nasal cavity.
Those guys on the cover of BY COLD MOON’S LIGHT (especially the one in the back) could easily be members of 1980s synth-pop band. I’m kinda getting Style Council/Thompson Twins vibes.
@DiscoDollyDeb, I can’t unsee it now. Also, I now feel like this could almost be a collaged together fan poster? Like “I love this picture of the cute one and that picture of the bad boy, so I will cut them both out and glue them to this cute backdrop I found in mom’s copy of Ladies Home Journal. Boom! wall art.”
INSTA BOYFRIEND is an accurate representation of what I can see without my glasses, but that mitigates against it being a good cover.
If those are clouds of cologne, it’s more likely Axe body spray.
I keep on getting plagued by the monsters love curvy girls on amazon and I still don’t want to read them.
Also the Manic Street Preachers did a music video with faceless dummies which is kind of creepy. Not what you want for a romantic novel.
@DiscoDollyDeb needs more hair bleach!
@DDD: I liked the Thompson Twins. Now I’m going to be earworming “Hold Me Now” all day.
@Sandra – There are a billion worse earworms to have than “Hold Me Now”. For example, “By Cold Moon’s Light” guys’ uncles – these guys (cuing Haddaway’s “What Is Love?”):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_night_at_the_roxbury.jpg
InstaBoyfriend: Ouch. Or possibly @OuchOuchOuch.I saw the thumbnail and thought Why isn’t this in Cover Awe? … and then I understood. I like to imagine a horrid misunderstanding between Cover Designer and Cover Artist, who left the unfinished picture while making a coffee run, and came back to find it had been sent to the printer.
And what’s with the {braces}? Save those for abstruse mathematical functions, or fill-in-the-blank formulations. Even I can’t envision a series of “{prefix} Boyfriend” titles.
His Human Rebel: Oh for the days when there was no such thing as a Font Family; roman and italic came in different bins. Besides, it really doesn’t look as if she fully reciprocates the unseen monster’s feelings. Curvy Girls have Grave Doubts about Monsters? Now there’s a series I could go for.
Alpha Attacked: Oh, too easy. Beta Attacked, Gamma Attacked, Delta Attacked. Series title: Frat Row Wars.
By Cold Moon’s Night: I’m getting vaguely AI vibes: Can a human and an android overcome their differences to find love in the big city?
Is anyone else reading the title on that third one as “Alpha A Hacked”? Just me?
Hmmm. That last one, is that Zachary Quinto on the cover? It sure as heck looks like him
If I wanted to read about curvy girls and monsters, I’d just do a re-read of Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum.
#1 – for some reason the specific thing I’m stuck on is that the DOG has a face. This suggests that the dog is the protagonist and everything is from its perspective, and given that it’s surrounded by faceless horrors, I am concerned about it.
#2 – this woman is trying to remember something or resolve a dilemma, but whatever it is seems likely to be Quirky given the colours, so we don’t need to be too worried about her, which is great because I don’t have much concern to spare due to the dog’s situation.
#4 – @Jill Q, you are right about the collage. I couldn’t quite quantify what was unsettling me about it until reading your comment, so thank you!
I desperately NEED someone to do a deep dive with some of these cover models to find out how they feel about their representation on so many romance books. The dude in the back of By Cold Moon’s Night is on like 4 separate MM books I’ve read.
There’s another guy who is on both MM and MF covers, and I just want someone to ask him “how do you feel about being a rugby player, a football player, a soccer player, a hockey player, a biker dude, a wolf shifter, etc?” I’m just fascinated. 🙂
Do you notice that the arms on His Human Face don’t match the face?
@EC Spurlock, I also saw “A Hacked” (and also “4 Hacked”).
And just what is a “cold moon’s night” anyway? Is there such a thing as a warm moon’s night? A cold moon’s day?
Insta Boyfriend faceless cover is for the Amish who don’t put faces on rag dolls, don’t take/allow photos, and don’t illustrate faces because they believe it violates not having a graven image from the Ten Commandments, though, the dog shouldn’t have a face either.
@LML: Her arms possibly belong to Alec Baldwin and I can’t un-see it.
Cold Moon is the name of December’s full moon. Does the book take place in December?
I just can’t get over the amount of airbrush on the last one. Please put the smudge tool down, you’ve turned the model into putty. Gumby has more facial detail.
I think the dog ate their faces off. Which is what you get when you go for a walk in the woods and don’t bring enough snacks.
I really hate the faceless covers. They’re creepy. The new Casey McQuiston got stuck not only with a faceless cover, but the characters also have no skin color. They are WHITE. The color white. They get hair and button-up shirts with colorful maps on them, but no faces or skin tone. I may be looking for another edition – anything that doesn’t have that terrible cover on it. Or I’ll just borrow it from the library so I don’t get stuck owning it. The faceless covers seems like a new low of lazy design on the part of the publishers. Can we please go back to photo covers now?
I suddenly realized that when I actually took note of the title, {insta} boyfriend, neither it nor the faceless cover models made me think of social media. Rather, I was thinking more of a one-dimensional pressed male figure that you immerse in water to reconstitute a fully equipped boy friend, including a face customized just for you! Maybe that’s why the bf figure is more proportional than the faceless gf. She might be still in development. Come to think of it, maybe I’d only be willing to order an {insta} pup from this company.
Unpopular opinion (SORRY!)… I kinda like faceless covers. I just feel like expressions can look so SILLY. I know, I know… a romance reader who squirms at the expressions of people in love.
Why does the model on the cover of, His Human Rebel, right arm that looks like a man’s arm that didn’t skip Arm Day at the gym?