Yeah...

You may have noticed that my page looks different (and not very good). I was playing around with the look of my page in the middle of the night. I'm not crazy about how it looks right now, so bear with me. I got too tired to fix it and went to bed. I'll deal with it later.

In the meantime, feel free to read the new cover I posted! It's pretty frightening, so hold on to your hats!

-Lyndee

Bonanza

In a comment to one of my previous covers, Wendy the Super Librarian directed me to this cover. My eyeballs were raped looking at this thing.

I am going to assume, for the sake of my own sanity, that this book takes place in a wax museum. Or perhaps the front window of a store, among the mannequins. I refuse to believe the cover designer thinks that real people look like this. I can't decide who looks the most lifeless.

The title of this book is not only stupid, but makes the wax mannequins even more disturbing. "Baby Bonanza" seems a slightly inaccurate description of the cover itself, since only two babies are shown. But, what does it mean? Baby Bonanza implies many, many babies. Is this creepy, vacant-looking man making some sort of baby clone army? Is this the Stepford Babies?

This is apparently part of some sort of "Billionaires and Babies" collection. I keep staring at that little picture in blue above the Billionaires and Babies...it took me a while to figure out what that was supposed to be. I am 93.7% sure that's a silver spoon. A silver. Freaking. Spoon. The baby clone army is going to grow up to be an army of spoiled celebutantes.

I shouldn't snark before bed. Now I'm going to have nightmares.

What is the meaning of this?

Okay, they get an A for effort in trying to make this look sexy, but they hugely failed. This is painfully unsexy to me. She looks like she's waiting for more than what she's getting from him.

Woman: Kiss me! Kiss me now!
Man: Uhhh....okay. Oh. Hold on, you have mustard on your chin.

Either that, or he's trying to kiss her, but is obviously a dweeb that doesn't know what he's doing, and she's grabbing that champagne flute with the intention of tossing the contents into his face.

I can't decide which it is. I'm leaning toward the latter, because, while her torso is close to him, her hips are far away...meaning she had to lean in for that kiss. Actually, if a real person tried to stand in that position, she would probably lose her balance and fall on top of the guy, but I digress.

What initially drew me to this cover was the baffling title. Who is doing the seducing, here? The woman looks more seductive, but the guy looks like he's doing all the work (and not very well, I might add.) Furthermore, what, exactly, is a "paper marriage"? (No, seriously, I don't know what that is. If somebody does know, please tell me. I feel like I've heard the term before, but I can't define it.)

Fin!

There is a local used bookstore not far from my house that I've been meaning to stop by for a while now, and today, as I was driving home, I passed by it and thought, "Why not?". Boy, am I glad I finally gave into the whim. For weeks I've been trying to find a good source of cheesy oldschool clinch covers and other such nonsense, and I hit the jackpot today. Behold:


I love these covers. I love them. Why, you ask? Because back in the day, the romance novel cover artists didn't even make a half-assed attempt to hide the fact that there was major sex going on. I mean, that's why women read them, isn't it? Duh. They also didn't bother trying to make their characters any sort of realistic, because who wants that, right?

My eyeballs didn't even know what to stare at first! There's so much to feast one's eyes upon. We have a naked man back (and I usually love me a back), but if you direct your gaze slightly lower, ladies (and gentlemen, if you're into this sort of thing), you will see an impossibly round ass in tight jeans. To the right, we see cleavage, but there is something slightly more interesting to distract us from the bosom area. Our redheaded heroine is pulling up her skirts to reveal a leg to which is fastened a classically phallic gun via lacy garter.

I can't help but think that this is an odd time to be pulling out the gun. Was she hired to seduce, and then kill this mulleted, muscle-ized bohunk, or did she simply slip it under her dress for safety reasons? I'm more inclined to believe the former, although the latter would make for an amusingly awkward situation...

Mulleted Bohunk: "I must ravish you!" *they start ripping of their clothes, she pulls up her dress* "Huh?"
Insipid Redhead: *looks down at gun* "Whoops-ies! I forgot that was even there!"

Anyway. I'll probably be going to the same used bookstore for my covers from now on, it's a freaking treasure trove.

(Sidenote: is it me, or is the setting sun ridiculously large? I mean, it's not even on the horizon, it's still in the sky, just half-covered by a cloud...It seems preposterously out of proportion to me...)

Okay, I'm done talking. End.

More Clinch-y Goodness

This cover makes me smile. I love the classics. A mulleted, over-muscle-ized hunk of man meat who is, it appears, completely in the buff. He's lifting, as if she weighed no more than a feather, an unrealistically gorgeous redhead. But what I love most about this cover, for some reason, is that she's wrapped in effing FUR. When a man will give you the pelt off his back, even if it means he himself with be walking around naked, you know it's love, am I right?

I hope I'm wearing that outfit the next time I run into my (vegetarian) ex-boyfriend. "Yeah, I wear fur now. What are you gonna do about it?!"

I've been in an old school clinch cover mood lately, so if any of you find a good one, send it to me, yes? :) Love!

Harlequin's Done it Again...

JamiSings sent me this terrifying cover. This looks like it came out of some kid's nightmare. We have a young boy with a completely frightened look on his face, for good reason, because there is a masculine hand (with creepishly long fingers...and finger nails) grasping his shoulder. The possessor of the hand is unseen, leaving how scary he is to our imaginations. I'm going to go with somewhere between crap-in-your-pants scary and curl-up-in-the-fetal-position-trembling scary.

What makes it even more horrifying is the scared yet somewhat lifeless facial expression on the boy's face. The camera angle makes it even scarier, because it is as if he's looking up. At me. Hey, dude, I didn't want to have anything to do with this. Don't look at me like that.

I assume that said boy is the titular "reluctant witness". This brings to mind all sorts of horrifying things this child might be forced to witness. What are they making him watch?

Jami brought up an excellent point after sending me this cover - this may be a Harlequin intrigue, but it's still a Harlequin, which means it is most likely also a romance. What is supposed to be romantic (or, for that matter, intriguing) about this alarming cover? Pedophilia and kidnapping are not sexy.

I Know, This Took a While

I literally started laughing aloud in the middle of Wal-Mart when I laid eyes on this cover. Is he supposed to look...paternal? Or is he, as he appears to be, just posing with some random baby for publicity? In front of a red curtain?

Furthermore, that baby not only looks creepy, but fake. That's definitely, obviously, and visibly a phony baby. Try holding a baby at that age like that without it squirming and wiggling. Babies don't just perch on some random guy's arm and turn and smile for the camera. For crying out loud, at least TRY to make it look like a real, living human baby.

I think you already know how I feel about covers with babies on them anyway. They don't leave a good taste in my mouth. (Hah! I just got a mental picture of myself licking a baby cover, and being disgusted by the taste. How disturbing.)

I laughed even harder when I saw the "MAN of the MONTH" in the bottom left. Umm...I think I'll wait until next month, please. Even if he is a millionaire. In command.