Welcome back to Cover Snark!
From Pam G: They only get one wing each? How does that work? Like a three-legged race, only a mile up in the air? What if her hair gets tangled in her feathers? Pleather Warehouse would go broke without them.
Sarah: Maybe she has all those straps because they have to fly tethered together, as Pam G said, like a three legged race in the sky.
Amanda: They all look very plastic.
Elyse: It’s giving Taylor.
Amanda: Taylor would never show her forehead like that.
Sneezy: The lack of texture gives me uncanny valley.
From Kareni: This looks rather gravity defying.
Sarah: Everything about this gives me the ick: the teeth. WHY SUCH TEETH. The perspective of the flip flops. And the absolute bullshit of this pose.
WHY SO MANY TEETH.
Elyse: Let’s just put the boat in a completely random area of the image. No centering required.
Sarah: And I think the boat is a stock image so it doesn’t match the rest of the image?
Elyse: It’s like a kids drawing of a boat.
Sneezy: The leaves look like stock too, but from another parallel reality. It’s just really jarring that it’s the only thing on the cover that uses obvious and blended shading.
Another from Pam G: Titular Snark for your crunchy delectation. And why–when cursive is nearly extinct–does it keep showing up on book covers?
Sarah: I feel the same way about Wine Mom Font as I do about Scriptina: ENOUGH. BANNED. STOP IT.
Amanda: The title feels like a UTI waiting to happen.
Sneezy: Oh, come on. Do FUN cursive. Enough of this bland shit. And has anyone actually had jam and dill pickles together? Is it an actual thing? (Please don’t be a thing.)
From Elle: I’ve enjoyed several of Katie Ruggle’s books but I think your Cover Snark readers might appreciate the surfeit of brow-furrowing material on this cover… the idea of pausing mid-climb for an upside-down kiss, the pun and the odd details of the figures. Does he have an extra joint in his left arm? Is she wearing a facial mask? And then there are the safety issues. I don’t know much about rock climbing, but her shoes don’t look up to the task and the places of harness straps looks questionable.
Sarah: Initially I was like, oh, that’s kinda cool but then I looked closer. Is he pulling her hair? Ow! Why is her face an entirely different shade? 100000000 points for the excellent pun, though. Well played.
Elyse: Is that bird taking a shit?
Sneezy: I don’t know if I’d trust any rope thing more than gravity, but good on them for having fun, I guess.
No, I change my mind, one’s upside down and the other’s pulling hair, GET DOWN THIS INSTANT!
WHERE IS SHIPWRECKED LADY’S OTHER LEG?
Someone really liked that upside down spiderman kiss from the Tobey Maguire days. Idiots who do stuff like this are the same ones that ignore other safety tips – like wearing helmets – and end up on the news at 10
Plus, does that say “effing in-tents?” More minus points for bad pun. This does not make me hope that their date works out
@Kathleen Jowitt, I’m going to assume her other leg and his left arm have been eaten by sharks.
@Kate Rose: In the alt text, I describe it as “the Spiderman kiss.”
Climbing shoes need to be flexible and grippy, so they do look pretty insubstantial compared to hiking boots. I’m more worried about the poor girl’s neck, which looks surprisingly long.
In defense of the Spider-man rock climber, I’m pretty sure he’s holding the belay line, not pulling her hair.
The problem I see that “she’s” not holding the same line, so she’s about to swing into the mountain upside down and concuss herself.
As for the neck thing, it wouldn’t look so weird if she weren’t hunched forward. The scapular protraction is blocking her thoracic extension which is forcing her into cervical hyperextension.
Basically, nice idea, insufficient artistic undergirding in physics + biomechanics.
I think I was not quite awake when i commented this morning – i missed the spiderman kiss comment and the pun comment in the original comments (tho’ I stand by rolling my eyes at the pun lol)
@Elyse: No, the bird isn’t taking a shit, it’s flying off with the necklace that slipped off when Our Heroine went upside-down for the cover shot. That’s what you get for wearing loose jewelry while rock climbing; she’s just lucky it didn’t catch on something and throttle her.
@Louise, thanks for the explanation. I thought it might be wearing jesses and was a hunting bird belonging to one of the leads. In any event that girl is about to slide right out of her harness and bowl both of them over the cliff.
And is that demon wearing goggles? It looks to me like he’s got goggles pushed up into his hair. Probably a wise idea when flying into the wind. That cover looks more like a family portrait or a LinkedIn shot of coworkers than anything romantic.
It took me a while to parse the pickle and jam. Still not sure I read it correctly
The shipwreck cover makes sense when you realize she’s a helium balloon. No gravity needed, weird face painted on, only one leg inflated but whatever …
For the record, pickle jams and jellies do exist. Many time mixed with peppers, but not always.
Excited about a new Katie Ruggle novel, but that spiderman kiss looks downright terrifying. When you think about the other possibilities for close contact when rock climbing (which I hope are in the book), the cover artist thought that this was a good idea?
Seriously, I am so over the cartoony illustrated covers.
Simplest explanation for the teeth:
They’ve been shipwrecked for a while.
That ship just pulled into view (can’t see its name, it’s probably the M.V. Soylent Green), full of “alternate protein sources”
And they’re hungry…
If heis a demon protector, why does she have the horns? Unless she is a demon and he is a human who was tricked into “protecting” her?
The rock climbing cover is seper problematic, except for the pun and the bird. 😀
Demon Protectors: Are we sure the wings aren’t on some short person hidden behind them? Sort of like a demonic mother hen sheltering the plastic MCs under her wings?
What’s up with the weird placement of the word pickle that seems to be propping up the models nipple? It’s really distracting!
Shipwrecked gal is missing a leg and her beau is missing an arm…?
They should have just made the nipple the dot of the i in the yuck of that cover. If you’re gonna do bad, do it thoroughly.
And at first glance, I thought the jam jar and pickle were “the family jewels.”
I definitely would recommend any Katie Ruggle, although I admit I didn’t pay too much attention to this cover.