Inspired by the first cover below, here are a five covers that left me baffled, scared, or embarrassed and that I wish would get a redesign. Please note that I love, or will love, all of these books and, um, kudos to the designers because even if the covers didn’t work for me, they might work for somebody else! Yeah.
Here are the books that immediately came to mind:
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Show of hands, who else had a “Wait, THAT’S IT?!” moment upon seeing the cover for J.K. Rowling’s upcoming title, The Casual Vacancy, this morning? Sometimes book covers can be pretty gaudy with everything that can be thrown on them, but this was completely…underwhelming. In no way – cover, content, etc – am I expecting Harry Potter 2.0, but REALLY?! This is the best they could do for J.K.-EFFING-ROWLING? Okay then.
Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
I believe this did get a redesign for the paperback, but THIS is the one I read and I giggle every time I see it. WHAT ON EARTH. Okay, sure, there is a dairy farm in the book and blahblahblah, but who thought putting an actual cow with a crown on the cover was a good idea? And why did I pick it up anyway? Oh, yeah, because it has such a heartwarming and charming story inside. Still. Putting animals on a cover is almost always a sure way I won’t read it (mostly because I think they’ll DIE).
Requiem by Lauren Oliver
This is a new one, so hopefully there’s still a chance that they’ll change it, but, ugh, way to test my previous statement of, “I’ll read anything Lauren Oliver writes” with this cover. -__- Okay, not really, I’ll still read anything she writes, but am I alone in not liking it? I already wasn’t fond of the covers for Delirium and Pandemonium but I find this one straight up CREEPY. The model looks demonic to me and, hey, maybe turning into one is the final condition of the deliria, in which case GOOD JOB GETTING THAT ACROSS, design team, but I do not like it.
The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa
If I wasn’t already a fan of Julie Kagawa there is no way I would have picked this up. I am not into Hot Topic gothy things (erm, apologies if you are!) and this screams that in spades to me. Surely there’s a better way to depict scary and dark vampires and everything else, right? And then there’s the whole whitewashing issue which I won’t get into…
The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead
Clearly I am saving the best for last. Where to even start? The constantly changing model for Rose? The question of which characters these models are supposed to be? The complete CHEESINESS of them all? I have a difficult time pushing these books on friends because they’re put off by the covers. And, really, who wants to read these in public? With multiple series getting a complete redesign, it’s a surprise these haven’t been touched yet. I already own the entire series, and I usually hate the idea of having to repurcahse books I already own, but as my friend Lindsey tweeted:
please please please if any book series needs a cover redesign, it’s Vampire Academy. I would srsly re-purchase everything if that happened.
— Lindsey in the sky. (@starlightstorm) June 19, 2012
Agree or disagree with any of these? Are there any other books you wish would get new covers? Share them with me!
About Stephanie
Speaking of whitewashing, was I the only one side-eyeing that pretty white girl in a dress on the cover of For Darkness Shows the Stars after reading Elliot described as having brown skin over and over in the book itself?
AH, YES. I definitely had to take a pause when reading Elliot’s description to judge the cover. Such a shame. Pretty cover as it may be, it did not depict any aspect of the book at all in the girl, the dress, or the space type vibe it gave.
Oh yeah! I kept expecting them to FLY off into space, but it never happened :(
DECEIT DECEIT.
Perhaps that’s what they do off page, haha.
Hm, you know, a lot of people always complain about the VA books but I never really had a problem with the covers. They’re ALRIGHT I guess. They scream paranormal to me… but they aren’t the ugliest covers ever. But if the publisher ever did decide to redesign the cover, I’m definitely open to seeing what they could come up with.
Ha, it would be hilarious if they turned out to be even worse! My main issue is the inconsistency because I don’t like the Bloodlines covers much either, but I like that they’re at least keeping the same models and such. But I guess that’s just me being nitpicky — at least the content of them all is great!
I seem to be the only blogger who actually likes the cover for The Casual Vacancy. It reminds me of the old Agatha Christie novels, which is exactly the kind of British mystery that I’m expecting from this book, and I love that they went old-school with it instead of trying to appeal to the super-picky YA crowd:)
I think, because of the long wait for JKR’s next book, we built it up in our minds to be some amazing, epic thing and so far everything has fallen short of those expectations. I do wish they gone in a different direction, but at the end of the day I guess it doesn’t matter too much since I’ll still be buying/reading it, ha.
Obviously you know that I agree hardcore with this entire post. I do, however, have no crazy opinion on TCV. The genre of that book is one that my mom reads muchly and all of her books have covers that look like that, so I’m pretty much MEH about it, hahaha.
I haven’t read the Immortal Rules yet, but yeah that cover is just …I can’t.
I also feel so awkward when trying to convince people to read Vampire Academy because I know the first thing they’ll see when they look it up is the cover. GEEEEEZ. If I win the lottery, I will legitimately pay for cover redesigns. And I will also pay cold hard cash to find out who the frak the dude on the Frostbite cover is supposed to be.
Hmm, oh really? Interesting. Still, I think JKR deserves better than a boring, generic cover but maybe that’s what she wants, haha. I do hope the cover designer didn’t get paid too much though. :P
I was very…hesitant to pick it up myself. But it’s actually really great, you would like it!
On top of the covers, I was really put off by the VAMPIRE ACADEMY series name myself. I’m fine with it now, but it really didn’t do the books justice at all. They’re not even school that much! Alas…At least Bloodlines is getting better treatment.
That was TOTALLY my reaction to The Casual Vacancy. And I just started reading Vampire Academy and love them. But the covers were absolutely the reason I waited so long.
Honestly, the JK Rowling cover is really underwhelming. I’m still going to read it and probably going to love it, but that cover makes me sigh.
I’m really getting the impression that boring and simple is exactly what they’re going for with The Casual Vacancy cover, title, and blurb. Not really sure of the reasoning yet though… And not going to lie, the main reason I haven’t read Vampire Academy yet is those truly horrid covers. I DO NOT want to be seen with them in public.
There are so many horrible covers. I just hate it when a book sounds interesting and the cover is terrible. Even worse when the book is actually interesting but I can’t bring myself to buy it because of the horrible cover. Is there a way to customize book covers? lol.
At the top of my hate list would be the Succubus series and the Vampire Academy. Richelle Mead, if you are reading this, please please please, you need to do something about your book covers. The only ones that do not suck are the Dark Swan series. Vicki Pettersson have covers that are boderline horrid, too. Which is a shame because her books are amazing (nudge nudge).
Nalini Singh is a 50-50, too. Half of her Guild Hunter series has awesome covers (number 2 and 3) but the rest is just UGH.
I could go on and on and on but I’ll stop there. Hope you enjoy Comic Con. Don’t be a crying screaming fangirl,
Love,
Mel.
Hehehe… I think the discussion about The Casual Vacancy is FASCINATING. And honestly? I think I kind of like it… I like the early-mid-twentieth century vibe of it… and I was reading something recently, and they were saying that, basically, the point of the cover is to say ‘THIS IS NOT HARRY POTTER, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HARRY POTTER AND *BOOM* HAVE WE SHOCKED YOU ENOUGH TO GET YOUR ATTENTION?” It’ll be REALLY interesting to see how it looks in person, I think :D
YES> The cover for Requiem is a little… meh. And it LOOKS like a photoshop job, where as before it looked like it was somehow a photo with a girl with flowers.
As for The Immortal Rules? WTF. It’s one of the reasons I like Team Human so much. FUCK YES TO HAVING A GORGEOUS ASIAN GIRL TO REPRESENT THE ASIAN CHARACTER. The white washing thing sucks, but a lot of time, I think it’s just ignorance and lack of attention. How much you wanna bet the artist just didn’t know what Allie looked like other than black hair? And… yeah, the make-up is odd :S