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!