If you’ve never seen this column before, and most especially if you have, welcome to the modern Romance section. Current market trends have moved away from the discreet markers of roses and silk and toward total transparency of content. I’ve compiled for your amusement the best of the worst covers which I encountered during the last week of visits to my friendly neighborhood bookseller. Tonight Hell is empty, and all the devils are here, as we look at books about ghosts, devils, demons, and all their kinfolk.
Category: Haunt Me, Baby
Hm…is he haunting someone? Or is he being haunted by the memory of his lost buttons?
It’s 9/10s of the law.
So if I understand this title right, they’re both currently possessed? Did they meet at Afterliving Anonymous or something?
There is a ghost of a chance that this cover doesn’t tell you the entire book.
“Seduce the forbidden.” I think that tagline says more than I ever could.
All she inherited was a haunted castle…
This title and this tagline implies she’s had more than one ghostly admirer. Kinky!
Category: The Devil You Know
Yes, Miss Heyworth, those are quite charming.
Let me guess, more evolutionary biology to excuse any behavior whatsoever.
His STD is so hellish it starts at his knees.
And the cowgirl pictured in silhouette would know that because…?
Uh….he doesn’t look red to me….
Well, of course the devil’s a smooth operator. Think he uses “Smooth Criminal” as a ringtone? I’ve got $5 on it.
Disclaimer: Please keep in mind, this is all in good fun for the laughs. I am not posting these images to make fun of romance as a genre. I read romance on a regular basis (which is why I’m in this section at the bookstore to begin with), and there are plenty of excellent writers working in the field. But some of the cover art and titles just go too far in their attempts to be “sexy”—regardless of what’s in between the covers. I don’t even have to lampoon them; they mock themselves. Those books are the ones I’m spotlighting.
Hilarious!