Book Covers: The Bad (Rachel)

Hello everyone and welcome to part two of Book Covers: The Good, The Bad, and The Girls in Dresses, in which I will share some of my favorite and least favorite book covers. You can find my last post here. Today I'm going to share The Bad!

It is an unfortunate reality that sometimes, bad covers happen to good books. While I don't let bad covers affect my decision to read books, I really wish that some of my favorite books would get better covers!

Like I mentioned in my post about the good covers, I'm not a fan of couples on covers. The Just One Year cover bothers me because the couple is totally unnecessary. I mean, having a couple on the cover doesn't make much sense when you consider the actual subject matter of the book. And the Pushing the Limits cover is a little too steamy for a book that I want to carry around in public. When I got the hardcover of Pushing the Limits, I immediately removed the dust jacket because I disliked it so much, only to find this underneath:

image from Katie McGarry's blog

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THIS COVER, RACHEL. THIS COVER WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER.

I know it might be a little surprising to find the Anna and the French Kiss cover on this list. Well, honestly, I don't like this cover. It's super cheesy and looks like something I, with my extremely limited design skills, could have scraped together in a few minutes. It cheapens the book and makes it look less awesome than it really is. However, this cover has become iconic, and I've grown to associate it with the book we all know and love, so I've gotten used to it. 

This is the cover for Lair of Dreams, the sequel to The Diviners, which I featured in my good covers post. Yes, there was a cover change, and yes, I am very upset about it. This cover is stupid and it looks like the cover of an adult novel, which is bad because everyone knows that young adult books are supposed to get the pretty covers so that the teenagers see something shiny and buy it.

Do I really need to say anything about the Obsidian cover? I mean, come on! This cover is just embarrassing. It makes the book look like it's a bad erotica novel, when in reality it's a fun, action-packed story about aliens. And The Truth About Forever cover really bothers me. What is up with the random bracelet?! It would make sense if there was a bracelet like that in the book, but since there isn't, I don't understand why someone thought this weird photograph of a weird bracelet would look perfect on the cover. (Although, to be fair, the wishbone charm is relevant, so that's something, I guess.)

An Abundance of Katherines has had a few cover changes over the years, and I have no idea why this version was ever thrown into the mix. Just...why? What about this cover is appealing? It's so boring and weird and what's up with the close up of that girl's cut-off head? I'm also including the entire Vampire Academy series in my bad cover list because look at those covers and find one that's not terrible. I DARE YOU. I've also seen a few slightly different versions of these covers, but rather than making big, significant changes, the only thing that's different is the specific position of the models. So basically, every version of the covers look like this and I HATE IT. (Although, the newest cover designs made to coincide with the movie release are not terrible.)

And that's it for my Bad Covers...for now. Let me know what some of your least favorite covers are down in the comments!