Deck the halls and brace your eyeballs, because Stray Hearts and Mistletoe is here to jingle your nerves with all the grace of a tinsel tornado. If this cover were a Christmas sweater, it would be the itchy, unwashed thrift-store kind — featuring blinking lights, off-center reindeer, and regret.
Let’s start with the stars of the show: two dogs, who are clearly innocent victims of a Photoshop hostage situation. One is dressed in an elf-sized Santa hat and grinning like it’s day one at obedience school. The other is wrapped in what appears to be a denim doggie jacket, silently questioning the life choices that led to this shoot. Neither dog shares a light source, a drop shadow, or a believable reason for being digitally duct-taped to a background made of dollar store wrapping paper.
Ah yes, the background — a red gradient fever dream sprinkled with “Christmas sparkle” clip art that looks like it was lifted from a 2005 Myspace page. There’s also a sad little mistletoe graphic dangling stiffly from some overly symmetrical pine branches at the top. It’s festive in the same way an office break room decorated with printer paper snowflakes is festive — well-meaning but fundamentally tragic.
Then there’s the font frenzy. The title text, “Stray Hearts and Mistletoe,” goes full cursive chaos, slapping white and red text across the top with all the subtlety of a fruitcake to the face. It’s tilted just enough to feel like a design choice — a bad one. “A Christmas Story” hovers randomly in tiny sans-serif font like it wandered in from another project and couldn’t find the exit. And the author’s name? Loud. Large. Serifed. And seemingly unaware of the rest of the cover’s existence.
This isn’t a cover — it’s a craft project that got loose. It’s what happens when you give someone Canva Pro and exactly seven minutes before lunch break. It’s festive without being joyful, chaotic without being fun, and somehow both overdesigned and undercooked.
Final Verdict: Stray Hearts and Mistletoe might tug at the heartstrings, but the design tugs straight at your corneas. Next time, maybe just let the dogs design it — paws down, they couldn’t do worse.