This one almost snuck by us like a werewolf in a bustle skirt — but once you catch sight of that rust-rimmed porthole of design confusion, there’s no un-seeing it.
Let’s begin with the most pressing issue: why is the protagonist peeking out of a Victorian submarine window mounted on what appears to be the walls of a Victorian tearoom wallpapered in Pepto-Bismol pink? Is she emerging? Is she imprisoned? Is this romance or maritime quarantine? We may never know.
Now, the woman herself — clearly a stock photo refugee from a turn-of-the-century bridal catalog — stands awkwardly posed, clutching a leather satchel like it contains either love letters or silver bullets. She’s lit like she’s on the set of a hospital drama, while the background gently whispers foggy steampunk London. No shadows. No blending. Just a hard cut and paste, dropped behind an iron rim like a human postage stamp in a rusted mailbox.
And let’s not skip the red-on-pink assault happening in the color palette. This background is so aggressively magenta it could be outlawed in five countries. It’s like the wallpaper of a forgotten Victorian dollhouse exploded behind her. The fonts — oh, the fonts — are waging a full-blown stylistic war. You’ve got stiff serif yelling “Gothic!” while the highlighter-yellow block caps scream “Lifetime Original Movie, Tuesdays at 8.”
The porthole frame? That glorious oxidized donut of despair? It looks like it was borrowed from an old shipwreck documentary and slapped on with no regard for theme, tone, or color harmony. Steampunk? Historical? Paranormal? Nautical survival horror?
We don’t know what’s going on, and the cover doesn’t either.
It’s like someone made a Regency romance, a submarine disaster film, and a steampunk novella, dropped them all into Photoshop, and forgot to hit “undo.” The result? A fever dream you’d see after falling asleep on a chaise lounge with too much absinthe.
This is not a cover. This is a cry for help. A distressed design siren echoing from the depths of the genre mash-up ocean, begging to be rescued by a real art director.
“How to Marry a Werewolf”? Step one: don’t show him this cover. He’ll ghost you before the first full moon.