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Description: The second thrilling installment in Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy spinoff series.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| I don’t know the characters well enough to say if this is accurate, but the author thinks it is. As an outside, however, it looks rather icy and cold, not something I’d pick up for the cover. | The ‘thumbs up’ is really all about the title detail. I’m used to this general look from all the VA covers so I don’t mind it. I don’t love it either, but I don’t mind. |
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Description: #1 New York Times bestselling author Richelle Mead returns to the Otherworld, a mystic land inextricably linked to our own--and balanced precariously on one woman's desperate courage...
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| A return to the style of STORM BORN, I really like this cover. High fantasy in the background and a gritty urban fantasy heroine in the foreground, awesome. | I wasn’t nuts about the last one, but this is much better. I would have toned down the pink/purple background, but otherwise I like it. |
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Description: Logan Quinn was trying to kill me. My Spartan classmate relentlessly pursued me, swinging his sword at me over and over again, the shining silver blade inching closer to my throat every time. A smile tugged up his lips, and his ice-blue eyes practically glowed with the thrill of battle …
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| While I do like the details Estep points out, this model is so heavily made up it bothers me. Then you slap snow on top of all that eye-makeup and I really want to take a time out so she can wash her face. I’m not a fan of glamor YA covers, the fresh face on TOUCH OF FROST is much more my speed. | The fake eyelashes are a bit much, but I’m a fan (wait till you read book one, it’s awesome). I love the little details again too. |
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Description: A LIFELONG OBSESSION FBI Special Agent Taylor Jones has made it his mission to save those in harm’s way by any means necessary—including employing psychic agents like Desiree “Dez” Lincoln, who can communicate with the disembodied spirits of the dead. Taylor is haunted by his own ghost, his kid sister, gone missing at age six. For a quarter of a century he has been tortured by her loss and the mystery of her disappearance. A NIGHT’S INDISCRETION When Dez is seriously wounded, Taylor can no longer hide his feelings for her. Getting involved could spell disaster for both of them—not to mention those who rely on them for help—but once Dez lays her hands on him, he can’t resist the fierce attraction. But after giving in to his desires, Taylor pulls back, and Dez strikes out on her own. More…
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| This looks like it should be in a series with THE MISSING, perhaps Goodreads isn’t entirely up to date. Very Gothic and haunting, I wish the cover model was a bit more misty and mysterious, up close his frown is a little out of place. | The only working cover model gets another gig. I kind of love this. The colors, the setting, the pose etc. everything is working. |
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Description: Dianne Duvall portrays a world of temptation, loyalty, and heartbreak . . . a world where danger and desire walk hand in hand . . . Ami isn’t much for trusting strangers. She has a hard time trusting anyone. But she’s no coward, and she’s no pushover in the protection department either. So when she comes across a mysterious warrior taking on eight deranged vampires on his own, she doesn’t hesitate to save his bacon. Of course, that was before she realized what one little rescue would get her into . . . Marcus Grayden has been an immortal protector of humanity for eight hundred years, and at the moment he’s not interested in backup. From the moment Ami arrives in his life, he can’t deny that she’s strong, smart, and extremely skilled at watching his back. But she’s also destroying his protective solitude and stirring desires he can’t bear to awaken. After all, whatever her secrets –– how can she defeat death itself?
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| While the swirl and style roughly match book one, no part of a guy in a camo shirt says “urban fantasy” or “paranormal romance” to me. At least the red wash on DARKNESS DAWNS fits the genre. While I applaud giving our hero a shirt on NIGHT REIGNS, this just seems too much like a contemporary romance cover for me. | …oh no…it looks like he’s wearing a corset…and the camo shirt is wrong. I really loved the first book in this series and have already added this to the Wishlist, but not because of this cover. |
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Description: For star-crossed lovers Nimira and Erris, there can be no happily ever after until Erris is freed from the clockwork form in which his soul is trapped. And so they go in search of the sorcerer Ordorio Valdana, hoping he will know how to grant Erris real life again. When they learn that Valdana has mysteriously vanished, it's not long before Nimira decides to take matters into her own hands—and begins to study the sorcerer's spell books in secret. Yet even as she begins to understand the power and limitations of sorcery, it becomes clear that freeing Erris will bring danger—if not out-and-out war—as factions within the faerie world are prepared to stop at nothing to prevent him from regaining the throne.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| After all the difficulty everyone went through to get a cover model that actually reflects Nimira, I’m glad they went for continuity and created another cover that is all about this lovely model. | My thoughts exactly. |
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Description: Nix de la Fuente is part demon, part human, and works as one of the human liaisons to the preternatural Council. Any crime involving humans gets her attention, allowing her to work with any of the preternatural liaisons as well as human cops in her quadrant. Someone is killing vampires, and it’s up to her and her colleagues to determine who and why. She’s doing just fine until her former lover, vampire Tobias Caine, shows up on the scene. He’d broken her heart five years earlier. Was he back in town to do it again?
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| Love those curls, but not digging whatever they did to the model’s eyes. | I like this, but there is something about his expression that makes me think he is bored…not great for a romance cover model. |
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Description: Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days. The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old-girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| This cover seems to say “fashion week” more than anything else, but the explosive effect and tag line at the top are eye catching and effective. I want to read this for “My touch is Power” alone. | I love all the details explained by the design team…It makes the cover so strong for me when everything is so deliberate. |
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Description: Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine—despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she’s far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can’t control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it? More…
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| This cover has a very Lois Duncan YA-style, and I think it works well. My favorite detail is how Delaney is facing her own reflection. | The modern fairy tale vibe is perfect. |
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Description: When Lis London moves to Hollow Pike, she's looking forward to starting afresh in a new town, but when she sees the local forest she realizes that not everything here is new to her. She's seen the wood before - in a recurring nightmare where someone is trying to kill her! Lis tells herself there's nothing to her bad dreams, or to the legends of witchcraft and sinister rituals linked with Hollow Pike. She's settling in, making friends, and even falling in love - but then a girl is found murdered in the forest. Suddenly, Lis doesn't know who to trust anymore...
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| I love this cover, that haunting face and eerie elements emerging from a dark splash of ink across the page | It’s becoming trendy, but I love the hair turning into birds. Very edgy and provocative. |
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| I’m not a fan of guys so muscular they can’t put their arms down, and for me those muscles underneath that tattoo says “Mr. Universe” more than “out of this world”. The cover for book #1 had a lot more movement and a story to tell, though the HIS DARK BOND cover isn’t a total departure for the series. | This is more neutral than neg. I appreciate the wings tattoo because it tells you at a glance what the book will be about. That always gets a plus from me. |
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Description: When Feline Shifter Cassidy Warden saves detective Diego Escobar from plunging to his death, the naked Shifter woman takes his breath away. But she'd been breaking all kinds of human laws, and Diego, to save her from termination, has to promise his department he'll watch over her. Diego finds the task harder than he thinks--Cassidy is trying to find out what kind of mysterious hunter killed her mate two years ago, a hunter that could bring danger to all Shifters. Plus Cassidy has scent-marked Diego--essentially telling all other Shifter females, "Hands off." Diego risks his personal and professional life getting involved with Cassidy, but he realizes he'll do anything, even confront the deadliest of assassins and his own inner demons, to keep her safe.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| Cassidy sounds like such an interesting character in the description, the image on the cover is disappointingly generic. Standard Paranormal Romance fare, and I’m not crazy about the yellow title. | Yep. Nothing to really grab you here. |
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Description: Monster hunter Evangeline Stone woke up on the wrong side of dead this morning—and now there’s hell to pay. Barely recovered from her extended torture at the hands of mad scientist Walter Thackery, Evy can use a break. What she gets instead is a war, as the battered Triads that keep Dreg City safe find themselves under attack by half-Blood vampires who have somehow retained their reason, making them twice as lethal. Worse, the Halfies are joined by a breed of were-creature long believed extinct—back and more dangerous than ever. Meanwhile, Evy’s attempts at reconciliation with the man she loves take a hit after Wyatt is viciously assaulted—an attack traced to Thackery, who has not given up his quest to exterminate all vampires . . . even if he has to destroy Dreg City to do it. With Wyatt’s time running out, another threat emerges from the shadows and a staggering betrayal shatters the fragile alliance between the Triads, vampires, and shapeshifters, turning Evy’s world upside down forever.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| This cover is a great addition to the series, this image makes me curious about the story inside. | Perfect compliment to the previous covers. This looks like the first model again…wonder if that is significant to the story? |
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Description: I gasped . . . or tried to. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t draw breath. . . . His lips, pearly wet, parted and he blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath his weight. When I exhaled he sucked in my breath and his weight turned from cold marble into warm living flesh. Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly erotic dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of writing her bestselling book, The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. After all, Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she finds herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name. More…
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| I love the use of light and space in this cover, the birds curving around her body in the sky being echoed in the flourishes on the title. Very nicely put together. | Someone remarked that they thought this was YA based on the cover & I totally did too. Clearly it’s not based on the description, but I’m betting there will be some confusion. |
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Description: After a devastating battle at headquarters in New York, the ghostkeeping world is in shambles. When Emma and Bennett return home, they are determined to defeat the wraithmaster, Neos, forever. But it's not going to be easy. Bennett's parents kick him out when they realize he is still using drugs to enhance his powers. Emma is convinced her aunt has come back from the dead to warn her of a new threat. And worst of all, Neos is using wraiths to possess the students at Thatcher Academy. If the ghosts manage to take over the entire school, even Emma won't be strong enough to stop them. But if either she or Bennett sacrifice his or her powers, they might be able to save the ghostkeeping world once and for all-and break the "ghostkeepers lose their powers when they fall in love" curse. The question is: who will be the one to surrender all power? Fast-paced and romantic, this conclusion to the Haunting Emma trilogy will thrill readers as it brings the ghostly mystery to a close.
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| Julia’s Thoughts | Abigail’s Thoughts |
| Good continuity of cover model, but the background on this one seems overly simplistic. That medieval wall looks generic to me, am I missing a detail that gives this a stronger sense of place? | This is my least favorite cover so far…it looks very tween, but I’ve enjoyed the books and I’m looking forward to the conclusion for this trilogy. |
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And our picks for Best & Worst…
| Best | Worst |
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Great post you guys have here. I loved Hollow Pike by James Dawson. Definitely something I would gravitate to in a store. It is gorgeous and dark. Also love Departed by Shiloh Walker. Also love Demon Lover by Juliet Dark. There are a few others I like, but these are my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI really don't like Night Reigns by Dianna Duvall. Why is he shaped like that? I am with Abigail, he is wearing a corset or his belt is too tight. He almost looks like a doll actually. Just doesn't seem natural. Not a big fan of Kiss of the Vampire by Cynthia Garner. I agree, don't really know what the male model is doing and the pose is something we have seen with the Night Huntress World series and the men on those covers looked a lot more interesting LOL!
Great post ladies. A lot of these are being added to the wishlist :)
Love the Fracture cover. I don't think I've ever cared for any of the Vampire Academy cover..enjoy the stories though. Thanks for the awesome post.
ReplyDeleteLove the cover for The Demon Lover!
ReplyDelete@Offbeat Vagabond - Thanks for giving your thoughts, reading reactions is one of my favorite parts of these posts. I spent about 20 minutes trying to write something short and descriptive about how the man's head on KISS OF THE VAMPIRE seemed to be a different color than his body. Does anyone else notice that? Some kind of reverse farmers' tan going on?
ReplyDelete@Rain Maiden - The FRACTURE cover definitely tells a story, that one is going on my Wishlist to be sure.
@Rebs & Abigail - Ok, I *completely* missed THE DEMON LOVER description and I just assumed it was YA. Isn't that the YA dress? What grown up dresses like that? It's a gorgeous cover, but yikes, hope there aren't any mistaken purchases based vibe. Then again, the title should alert people that it's not junior high material... unless they have tunnel vision like me.
@Julia - LOL! I do see the reverse farmer's tan. His head seems to be darker than the rest of his body. If that is there way to try and make him creepy, they failed. I definitely think there was some cut and paste job done there LOL! Great post again guys :)
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