{"id":15283,"date":"2019-12-20T08:19:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T13:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/?p=15283"},"modified":"2021-01-28T15:16:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T20:16:42","slug":"the-books-of-2019-covers-i-hated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/15283","title":{"rendered":"The Books of 2019: Covers I Hated"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, things first, I’m only hating on covers from major publishers. They have budgets and should know better. Independent publishers and self-published books gets points for trying, so I almost never point them out (unless it’s really egregious).<\/p>\n

Secondly, I liked the content BETWEEN the covers of both of these books, so I recommend the words themselves, I just HATE these covers.<\/p>\n

This year, I only have two covers I really hated, both (coming as no surprise to me) were from Avon.<\/p>\n

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\"Sapphire<\/a>Sapphire Flame<\/em><\/a>s<\/em> (2019) Ilona Andrews<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Avon<\/p>\n

I don’t understand how Ilona Andrews consistently get such awful covers. This isn’t the worst they’ve ever gotten, but it’s not good either.<\/p>\n

Positives are that I love all the purple. I actually love all the colors in the cover. In fact, if this cover were just the swirly stuff and colors, I’d love it!<\/p>\n

But no, it has people. And that is always where Avon screws them over.<\/p>\n

One of the characters has a reputation for flitting around the world, and constantly posting beauty shots on social media.<\/p>\n

The other character helps to run a detective agency, including going out on investigations.<\/p>\n

Can you guess which character runs the detective agency?<\/p>\n

I really really<\/em> hate how weak and secondary the women on these covers always look. Yes, the guy ends up being a super secret agent, but all we know at the start of the story is that he’s a playboy. While she looks like she exists only to be arm candy. <\/p>\n

I admit this cover is nowhere near as awful as the one for Burn for Me<\/a><\/em>, but since I despite that cover with the burning hatred of the sun, that’s not saying much.<\/p>\n

I just want covers where the heroines look competent and capable of standing on their own two feet and fighting their own battles.<\/p>\n

This is not that cover.<\/p>\n


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\"The<\/a>The Wallflower Wager<\/em><\/a> (2019) Tessa Dare<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Avon<\/p>\n

This is nowhere near as egregious as the Sapphire Flames<\/em>, but I really dislike it. It’s all really bad Photoshop, where the couple obviously were not originally on that bed, and they’ve instead just been roughly pasted into some really bland background.<\/p>\n

Then to hide the bad photoshop job, they fill everything in with swirly colors.<\/p>\n

And boosted the outer glow on the guy, because he kinda looks like he’s on fire.<\/p>\n

And the less said about that facial hair, the better, because that that level of manscaping did not exist in Ye Olde Historical Times.<\/p>\n

I’ll also note that there is no way you’d guess from this cover that the heroine is a spunky spinster who has dedicated her life to saving animals. But that’s kinda par for the course with these kinds of covers, so it’s mostly just disappointing, and a reminder of why I love the existence of eBooks.<\/p>\n



\nThe Books of 2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, things first, I’m only hating on covers from major publishers. They have budgets and should know better. Independent publishers and self-published books gets points for trying, so I almost never point them out (unless it’s really egregious). Secondly, I liked the content BETWEEN the covers of both of these books, so I recommend the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1093,2,1092,1090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-covers","category-books-reading","category-covers","category-years-favorites"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-3Yv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}