If you’ve ever dreamed of dining at a table hovering six inches above wet sand while ghost cocktails shimmer around you like mirages from a heatstroke-induced hallucination — have I got the book cover for you.
Canapés at the Beach House Hotel gives us everything and nothing, all at once. It’s the design equivalent of an overpriced resort with no running water: sunny on the surface, but spiritually vacant underneath.
Let’s begin with the beach furniture, which has been lovingly cut and pasted from someone’s “Patio Ideas” Pinterest board. The table and chairs are rendered in all their stock photo glory, complete with harsh artificial shadows that suggest either a solar eclipse or a third-year graphic design student who just discovered the “drop shadow” slider. They don’t sit on the beach — they hover like furniture cursed by a coastal poltergeist.
And speaking of cursed, let’s talk about the snacks. The titular canapés appear to be floating in defiance of gravity, logic, and food safety regulations. They’re joined by three cocktails, each styled by someone who last saw a martini in a 1997 Applebee’s commercial. One of them is garnished with what I think is a pineapple leaf, though it could also be an aloe vera sprout from someone’s desk plant. All drinks are carefully balanced on an obviously fake tabletop that has zero contact with the real world. There is no condensation, no glare, no sand. These drinks are as emotionally detached as your ex.
Now, the typography. “Canapés” is styled in a bubbly, cursive font that says “Mimosa Brunch” while the rest of the title screams “Corporate Real Estate Brochure.” The phrase “AT THE” is shoved in the middle like a child in a family photo who wasn’t supposed to be there. The author’s name is sprawled in all caps below like it’s been stretched to fit a publishing quota.
The background? A pixel-perfect beach at golden hour — so perfect, in fact, that it looks AI-generated from the prompt: “generic happy place where nothing happens and no one has feet.” Not a single person. Not a hotel. Not even a footprint in the sand. Just two haunted chairs and the distant echo of poorly applied gradients.
And don’t get me started on the tonal mismatch. The title says casual luxury, the layout says public domain clip art, and the overall energy says this was made on a Tuesday in Canva during lunch break.
This isn’t Canapés at the Beach House Hotel — it’s Cursed Tapas at the Photoshop Motel.
Final score: 1 floating daiquiri, 2 lonely chairs, and 0 grasp on beach realism.