Today, while waiting in the drugstore, I was perusing the books and came upon the above novel by Elizabeth George and immediately thought some idiot had reused the Shifing Love cover but zoomed in so you couldn’t tell it’s a shower curtain. Now that I see them together I can see they aren’t the same, just humorously close. Ms. George’s cover wouldn’t be so bad if I could only get the shower curtain out of my head. Oye!

In Romance Novel Land covers are more often embarrassing than weird (Shifting Love is quacky). As one romance blog so tactfully put it, It’s Not Chick Porn. So why do so many covers blatantly reinforce this notion? Sex sells, but we want to be able to read these books in public! I wonder if you can buy tactful jacket covers for paperback romance novels. Covers are powerful, and a badly designed one can often put me off a book completely, even though I know the old adage.

Lets look at a variety of Stephanie Laurens’ covers, because you know I just adore her.

So tell me, which of these books would you be most likely to read? Which would you be most likely to read on an airplane? And which would you expect would make you roll your eyes repeatedly? Right. But they all contain the beautiful addictive goodness that is Stephanie. Oh Stephanie, how could you let them malign your masterpieces? (Not counting the third one, of course – it’s quite fetching.)

Who am I kidding? All it needs to do is say “Stephanie Laurens” on the cover and I will snap it up before you can say “Wuv, true wuv”.