Welcome back to Cover Awe!
Cover illustration by Cynthia Sheppard
Amanda: Love the eye contact on this one!
Sarah: This cover is an incredible balance of stillness between their faces and movement with all the fabric. The composition is flawless.
Lara: I’m rather taken with the bouffant hair. I feel it adds to the cover rather nicely.
Cover illustration by Alexis Lampley
Sarah: Oooh my!
Elyse: The dress spacesuit is chef’s kiss.
Sarah: She looks like she’s wearing a bearded iris and floating in front of a soap bubble. I love it.
Lara: Those colours are blissful.
Cover illustration by Devin Elle Kurtz
Sarah: Well that just glows in fascinating ways.
Amanda: This creates such a lovely sense of place.
Sarah: The use of shadow and fire is exquisite. I love how the cat and the main character are limned in firelight.
Lara: I love the details like the whisp of steam coming off the teacup.
Cover design by Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs
Amanda: I love how soft everything is and how the color and texture of her dress blends in with the flowers.
Sarah: That is a really interesting merge of a few trends! Flowers, soft focus, mostly similar color palate. The softness is so alluring.
Elyse: She looks like Alba Baptista.
Both the covers for THE TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES and SWORDCROSSED give a really good sense of what those books are about. Definitely recommend them both (although TELLER is the stronger of the two.)
The artist links to books highlighted in Cover Awe are wonderful, but it would be helpful to have links for purchasing the books, especially given recommendations such FashionablyEvil’s!
Actually, there are times when books in Cover Snark deserve links as well. I’m always on the lookout for the elusive F+ read, and I have a feeling some may be hiding under snarkable covers. Yeah, judging books and covers here.
@Qualisign: We used to hyperlink the images in Snark/Awe to buy links, but Amazon got mad. We can try to think of a workaround though.
We do have retailer links with our affiliate codes in the left sidebar. Clicking those and searching for the book works if you’re wanting to make sure SBTB gets credit for the sale. Many of the books featured are also in our repository already, like Swordcrossed and Teller of Small Fortunes. The repo entries should come up if you search for them in the site search bar.
THANK YOU for the explanation and the links! Your explanation makes sense even if Amazon doesn’t.
@Qualisign: Amazon loves a persnickety rule.
I think the US covers for “The Red Scholar’s Wake” and “A Fire Born of Exile” would fit nicely in here.
love all the beautiful colors on the colors.
Tor.com did a very deep dive into how the cover for SWORD CROSSED was designed. https://reactormag.com/behind-the-scenes-of-the-swordcrossed-cover/
All of these covers are just *chef’s kiss*
The cover of If the Duke Dares gives me hope for the future of romance covers.
The cover of The Teller of Small Fortunes is so beautiful I would hang it on a wall. What talent! I think I would see something new each time I looked at it.