Welcome back to Cover Snark!
Sarah: I think we’ve snarked this before but this cover is so funny
Is his hand down his waistband while her hand is in his pocket? Gosh I love this cover
Amanda: A fine vintage of Snark.
Sarah: Such vintage. The more I look at it, the funnier it is. She looks very suspicious. He looks pouty. Is the moment of truth when she pulls whatever it is out of his pocket?
WHAT IS IN HIS POCKET. A mystery that will taunt me for ages.
Sneezy: Smeagol wanted to know too…
Sarah: I swear I thought this said “Pokemon Point.”
Amanda: Weirdly, I don’t think this is the first “Pokemon” loopy font snafu we’ve had.
Sarah: The members of my family who enjoy Pokemon Go would be very happy to shiny hunt in that location. I’d be fine staying inside.
Sneezy: You saw that now, Sarah, that hut could be a Pokemon gym.
It probably says more about me than the font, but my second thought wasn’t that it said something other than Pokemon, but that somehow they spelled Pokemon wrong.
From Karen: This cover is so far from matching the description, that it boggles my mind:
A woman’s cherished legacy becomes a pirate’s obsessive quest in this spellbinding historical romance from an award-winning author.
“Beautiful, masterful, rich, powerful and seductive… has all the allure and darkness of Wuthering Heights and the warmth of Judith McNaught’s Once and Always.” —Romantic Times
This picture belongs on zillow.com or some photo book from Architectural Digest or something. I suspect someone who blindly picks up this book based on the cover is going to be very surprised. Can we make this stop?
Sarah: Pirates live in luxury compounds with palm trees and manicured gardens now I guess?
LOLOL the cover copy:
The London docks in 1818 are no place for a woman. But Aurora Dayne is about to embark on a new life. With her modest belongings and a unique bejeweled locket—her sole legacy from her dead father—she boards a ship bound for Jamaica.
All hell breaks loose when pirates storm the gangplank, and the sheltered orphan becomes the prisoner of a ruthless privateer named Vashon. The towering, black-caped stranger arouses Aurora’s fear . . . and her irresistible desire.
Haunted by his past, Vashon lives outside the law and is driven by one purpose: to retrieve the Star of Aran, a fabled gem cursed by its own dark history. Beautiful Aurora is the key to Vashon’s quest. But when obsession flames into passion, he will risk everything to protect her—for there are others who would kill to possess the star.
Lara: I have no words. Wow.
Sarah: I think my favorite part is that Not One Thing on this cover matches “the allure and darkness of Wuthering Heights and the warmth of Judith McNaught’s Once and Always.”
Nothing says Wuthering Heights like a south Florida AirBnB.
Kiki: Wuthering Heights but it’s in Florida definitely sounds like an off-off-off-off broadway concept. Or a theatre major’s senior thesis!
Sneezy: This cover gives me serial killer or true crime vibes. Which technically counts as dark?
From Pam G: I’m sending this along, because it almost makes me wish for a faceless couple. There’s his elbow, her weird teeth and that taxidermied kitten. (No one would wear a white sweater dress to hold a live kitten.) And finally, that candy cane. The jokes just write themselves.
Sarah: None of these elements were originally together, right? There’s no way.
Elyse: Is that cat missing half its body?
Sarah: Maybe she has cavernous space in her underboob? I mean, if my underboob had a boot I’d be carrying all kinds of snacks and supplies.
Also, his suit fits weird. I’d love for The Menswear Guy to take a look at that one.
Kiki: What a lovely Kohl’s Christmas ad!
Sneezy: There’s several uncanny valley things about this, and the bright chirpiness makes it so much worse.
I think whoever did the cover for WHEN DAWN TAMES THE NIGHT got to the word “Jamaica,” thought “Right! Here’s a photo that makes me sort of think of Jamaica,” and called it a day.
I’m also finding the woman’s arm on the Price very confusing. Her wrist seems to be disproportionately small compared to her elbow? And there doesn’t seem to be room for her hand in his pocket?
The names in the Zillow cover book. Aurora = Dawn, intentional title pun? and Vashon is an island off Washington State.
And the last is “Knitted in Love Book One”. Are we supposed to think she knitted that dress? The cover does not suggest a small town cute yarn store romance, not the big cities don’t have yarn stores.
Does the candy cane woman even have feet? Her leg seems to just end. And I’m not a menswear expert, but I think he’s flipped. Doesn’t the pocket square go on the left side?
@Sandra—not gonna lie, I did try to see if I could get my hip bumped out like that and the opposite leg straight like she does. (Answer: it’s physically possible, but not at all a natural pose.)
And, yes, the breast pocket on a man’s jacket is always on the left.
On Wuthering Jamaica, is the dread pirate Vashon operating in London? The copy states that the pirates stormed the gangplank, the thing that people walk on to board or disembark from a ship . . .
I can’t get over the physics (or lack thereof) on Sincerely Not Yours–because unless that candy cane is discreetly anchored into the floor with a steel post, she should have toppled over by now. (In fact, I am convinced that’s why he’s looking so speculatively at said candy cane, and not actually at her!)
Also, are the two big bars behind them…supposed to be…knitting needles???
I look at those palm trees and house and the Golden Girls theme starts playing in my head immediately.
I, meanwhile, am stuck on
:: google, because there oughta be a law against putting unfamiliar names in script fonts ::
Falling for Polkerran Point. Unlike the Boss Bitches, I didn’t read it as Pokemon; instead I read it as Falling from, because isn’t that what you expect of landmarks with “Point” in their name?
Doesn’t seem awfully romantic. Do we open with a suicidal heroine and an attractive coast guardsman? That certainly gives an unpleasant twist to the “second chance” element of the series–a “Cornish second chance” series, to be exact. (Thank you, Google.) Seems like I oughta have deduced this, what with the Pol.
As someone from Seattle, the hero being named Vashon is extremely jarring in an already hilarious mismatch of cover and copy. Vashon is the name of an island right off of West Seattle. According to this site https://vashon-maury.com/how-did-vashon-island-get-its-name/, “ The word “Vashon” comes from the Lushootseed language of the Suquamish tribe, a Native American group that originally inhabited the island now known as Vashon Island, Washington.”
The red shadowing on candy cane woman’s face made me think she has a nosebleed. Not helped by the red spot on her shoulder.
The first cover, HOW TO SUMMON A FAIRY GODMOTHER, doesn’t seem to match the snark below it. Might be a remnant from a past cover awe?
“Sincerely, Not Yours” looks to me like it was a Paint By Numbers kit but the painter got really bored by the time they got to her feet and his face. I also thought she was on her phone, which is a lot to juggle.
@JB Hunt: It’s most likely a caching issue with your browser. I had the same issue on my laptop last night when I was compiling the post.
Yes definitely caching. If you clear your cache in your browser and reload, it should clear. Please let me know if it doesn’t?
I’m reading the synopsis for Till Dawn Tames The Night.
Immediately I’m reminded of the paperback pirate romance Claire was reading in the third Outlander novel.
Does the Moment of Truth cover look like a still from the 1940’s production of Grapes Of Wrath to anyone else? Just me?
From reading the cover copy for TDTTN I infer they never actually make it to Jamaica so — why put Jamaica on the cover? Actually that cover reminds me more of a tropical-set Rebecca than Wuthering Heights.
On Sincerely Not Yours, I never even noticed the cat until someone pointed it out. Is that candy cane on fire? Is she about to get her elbow singed? The stripes are certainly melting because they’re all so irregularly spaced. @Lucynka, I took the posts to be two flagpoles in front of a fancy hotel, but your guess is as good as mine! That whole cover is just sliding to the left; there’s all that dead space over on the right side and I feel like the title is about to fall off and bonk them on the head.
Falling for Polerran Point made me think people are jumping off those cliffs, which does not give warm and cozy.
Sincerely Not Yours: Of course it’s a weird-fitting jacket — it’s a uniform of some kind. That bit on the man’s right upper chest (viewer’s left) isn’t a pocket square, of which we’d see an upward-pointing triangle: It’s a nametag. He’s actually Maury, a doorman at a midtown Manhattan apartment building that was so cheap it didn’t want to spring for gold braid, so management just got a bunch of 44 Regular suit jackets at Men’s Wearhouse and told staff “this is your new uniform.”
Which, perhaps, explains way too much about the real plot: Maury is on his way to work, running late, and sees the maid for one of his longtime “eccentric” tenants carrying the cat, who has escaped yet again using the Santa Claus float in the Macy’s parade as cover (happens every year)…
Although I actually am serious about that being a nametag and not a pocket square.
I sent “Moment of Truth” to Cover Snark last September so, unless it had been used before then, I don’t recall seeing it since. It was definitely both of their hands in approximately the same place (though I also thought it might be one pocket with two openings) and the vacant expressions on their faces that made me think of Cover Snark. It deserves its place here.
I actually have an original copy of “Til Dawn Tames the Night” since the stepback has Fabio, whose covers I used to collect (since I haven’t discarded any of my books yet, I guess it’s “still collect”). Its cover shows a sword with a fancy hilt and lace gloves so it at least looks historical. I really like the Zillow and Golden Girls references to the reprint cover.