Ah yes, Bad Beginnings—a title so self-aware, it’s practically the cover’s only honest feature. This paranormal spectacle looks like it was forged in the glowing green fires of genre cliché hell, summoned by AI, and then blessed by the holy trinity of overblown lighting, suspicious anatomy, and one very confused German Shepherd.
Front and center we have our heroine, who appears to have just stepped out of a bootcut jeans commercial for magical influencers. Her waist? A structural impossibility. Her skin? Smoother than a wax figure airbrushed by a haunted Roomba. And her left hand? Gently cradling a wad of glowing green ectoplasm like she’s about to hex you or highlight your cheekbones—whichever comes first.
Behind her looms a mystical forest graveyard, or maybe it’s a fog machine factory—hard to tell through the swirling neon green smoke that looks like someone detonated a glow stick in Photoshop. The light sources are coming from every direction and obey no laws of man, god, or cinematography.
And then there’s the dog. This majestic German Shepherd looks like it wandered in from a police procedural and is now silently begging to be Photoshopped into literally any other cover. It’s giving, “Ma’am, I’m just here for the kibble, not your reanimated ex-boyfriend subplot.”
Now let’s talk about that typography. Bad Beginnings is styled with a font that seems to be part Celtic tattoo, part Victorian lampshade. The flourishes around the “B” are trying their best to convince you this is serious magical business, while the subtitle “Shady Spirits Book 1” might as well be the name of a bargain bin wine collection.
And the halo around the protagonist’s head? Is she a holy ghost? A spirit queen? Or is it just the universal sign for “this cover was designed by someone who just discovered radial gradients”?
This isn’t urban fantasy—it’s a fanfic fever dream rendered by a neural network trained on witchy Pinterest boards and early 2000s CD-ROM box art.
Bad Beginnings may be the start of a series, but judging by this cover, it’s also the start of several design interventions.