Welcome back to Cover Snark!
From Jen: Does his raised arm look too big in proportion or is it just me? And what is going on between his pecs? Is that an arrow intention? I just don’t understand some of those ridges.
Sarah: His obliques are smiling at me. No thank you.
Elyse: That is some fucked up forced perspective
Sarah: MY ARMPIT LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
Shana: Are we sure his arm isn’t glued on to his body?
From Elizabeth: Rather than a “protected angel,” his butt has a bullseye (and it looks like he is really sticking it out). Just weird and random.
Sarah: Does he think “pop” refers to his backside, and “lock” refers to his giant giant weapon? Is that a responsible way to carry a firearm?
And why is he so SHINY
Amanda: has the trigger been photoshopped out?
Sarah: Wait, HAS IT???
Amanda: I zoomed in and saw nothing there
I wonder if he wasn’t practicing trigger safety since his finger looks bent and they just removed the trigger entirely
Sarah: You don’t want a protected angel with a malfunctioning trigger finger.
Amanda: He’s also doing the classic America’s Next Top Model booty tooch.
From Pam: I’ve only ever seen a man carry a woman like this during a dance or skating routine and only momentarily. I don’t think they had ice dancing in the Regency. . . or mini skirts and Rothys. At any rate, he appears pretty smug about his prowess. Also, is that a window into another.
Sarah: Not only are the white tights giving me a good chortle, but why are they both so very, very Filter-smooth?
Amanda: The comfort of Rothy’s transcends time and space.
Shana: I wish we could see her expression because I bet it said, “Put. Me. Down.”
Sarah: It sort of looks like they’re on a couch, but there’s not enough back to that settee for her derriere.
Every day I write about romance, I type more and more incredible sentences.
Also from Pam: The Zoomie Vilebook: wherein two faceless beige people stare past each other into the mustard colored distance.
Sarah: What the fuck does that say.
Can I say again how much I hate this style of font. I can’t read it and it makes no sense to me visually.
Kiki: I am very distracted by the W in the author’s name that is very clearly an M.
Two back-to-school Macy’s mannequins
Sarah: The facelessness is so unsettling.
Maya: Also, two spiderwebs?? Two??? On the same arm??
Why does she need sunglasses if she has no eyes?
Sarah: …why does she need sunglasses if she has no eyes?
Also: all those detailed tattoos and even shoelaces ON TOP OF HIS PANTS?!
It’s fixed on the digital cover but paperback covers have the weird shoelaces.
But they can’t have any facial features?
Claudia: the zoomie zulebook!
Finally a book that explains the reasons for cat zoomies, using mannequins as posts.
Sarah: In the interest of science! I surveyed the whole family. Top guess was “Voomy Vulebook”
The first one, muscles aside, is the smirk because he just sniff tested his deodorant and it passed?
Zoomie Vilebook for the win! I know cursive writing is becoming a lost art, but seriously, that is not a cursive “r”!
The different size & color of THE LIGHT WITHIN ME’s near arm mean he’s wearing an inflatable fake arm like the ones in SpongeBob SquarePants S1 E11a MuscleBob BuffPants (seen here on SpongeBob: https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/txwhNxjT8JDkx80psWllaSvgbv9.jpg & a shark spokesperson more like the cover model: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D3aYudbW4AAshfJ.jpg). The irregularities in his torso show that’s inflatable too and he hasn’t finished blowing it up — a nod to the series title which a typo has unfortunately rendered as “Forgotten Alien Warrior” instead of “Forgettin’ Alien Warrior”.
The different size & color of THE LIGHT WITHIN ME’s near arm mean he’s wearing an inflatable fake arm like the ones in SpongeBob SquarePants S1 E11a MuscleBob BuffPants. The irregularities in his torso show that’s inflatable too and he hasn’t finished blowing it up — a nod to the series title which a typo has unfortunately rendered as “Forgotten Alien Warrior” instead of “Forgettin’ Alien Warrior”.
SHEPHERD SECURITY’s stuck-out butt is a side effect of the intense control required to fart out a geometrically precise cloud with words in it. The impressiveness of that trick should counterbalance to difficulty of determining and reading the title (trying to produce greater contrast in a fart cloud is, let us just say, not a worthwhile risk).
I see an eerie face pushing thru the curtain at the left of HANOVER SQUARE SPARE, kissing the hand. Is it her face, bending down from above the cover’s edge on a long, flexible neck? Is it a SPARE face? I didn’t realize he was sitting, and read his expression as, “Can you please decide where you want this? My shoulder is getting *tired*.”
THE SCRIBBLIE SCRIBBLE is just a placeholder title they forgot to remove. The book is a retelling of I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM, entitled I HAVE NO MOUTH OR EYES AND I MUST SAY, “MY EYES ARE UP HERE”. It’s set in The House Of The Faceless, a creepy joint with cobwebs all over (the 2 on the arm are just the tip of the iceberg).
Cover #2, I … what? Everything is just wrong. Make it go away.
#1: He has something alien growing inside his arm and it’s spreading across his rib cage.
#3: woorhie vulebook? woomhie vilelgook?
I had to censor the words that came out of my mouth, I think, though. It is THE ROOMIE RULEBOOOK. Which could apply to at least 20 books I’ve read and seems to be a good reason to not move to a big city.
I think the Zoomie Volebook was written by my rabbit. He was an expert at zoomies and had a lot of vole friends.
Can I assume Hanover Square is a time travel romance? It looks like it originally had a different background that would have made the settee more visible, but for some reason they photoshopped it out except for that one glaring light patch under her arm.
Given the issues with these covers, I wonder how many were “helped” by some type of GPT.
Am I the only one who sees the Voomie Vulebook?
The Zoomie Vilebook no faces has me thinking about our library system’s art for the Summer Reading Program. It’s in a mural format, so no one has a face, and I made faces for them using googly eyes (I’m the children’s librarian, of course, I have a backstock of them).
But then I also had several kids bring in their reading logs to show me that they had drawn faces on them because the kids were confused that they didn’t have faces. So maybe the author wants us to draw our own faces for them? Or we need those face stickers, where you can create your own, like Mr. Potatohead!
Amanda L., googly eyes make everything better! We should all keep a stash to add to faceless cover figures.