Ah yes, nothing says “police drama thriller” quite like… two CGI-glazed horses running through a radioactive forest.
The Witness, book two in The Women of Strength, Courage, and Hope series, gallops into our hall of infamy with the grace of a Photoshopped mare escaping a Lisa Frank fever dream. Where do we even begin?
Let’s start with the horses—the real protagonists of this cover, apparently. Rendered with such unholy clarity and brightness, they look like they were smuggled out of a “My First Clipart” folder, slapped down with no regard for depth, lighting, or reality. There’s no shadow, no interaction with the oddly fire-toned grass beneath them, and their placement screams “We Googled ‘freedom stock photo’ and called it a day.”
The background itself appears to be a forest drenched in radioactive sunset sauce. Those trees? More like neon carrot sticks. There’s a nuclear glow so intense, I half expected the subtitle to read A Tale of Love, Law, and Laser Ponies.
Now let’s talk typography. The title “The Witness” comes at you in a faux-handwritten script, trying so hard to be heartfelt but instead reading like a Hobby Lobby wall decal. The subtitle, meanwhile, is a squint-worthy info dump stacked above it in two different fonts, neither of which seem to have been introduced to the title beforehand. And let’s not ignore the author name, which is floating awkwardly at the bottom like a legal disclaimer—bold, centered, and totally disengaged from the rest of the design party.
The whole composition is a masterclass in visual dissonance. Nothing connects. Nothing blends. The mood is confused—are we witnessing strength? Courage? A Kentucky Derby prequel? The cover doesn’t know, and by the looks of it, neither do the designers.
The Witness is a prime example of what happens when genre confusion, stock photo dependency, and font indecision join forces. It’s not just a bad cover—it’s an equine enigma wrapped in radioactive trees and smothered in Canva tragedy.
Neigh means neigh, folks. Let this one trot quietly into the witness protection program.