Cover Critique: An Underarm Seduction

This week I had trouble choosing just one cover to highlight because there were too many great ones waiting in the wings, calling to me with their siren's song of utter ridiculousness. My indecisiveness didn't last long though when I stumbled upon this masterpiece of WTF-ery, and so I share it with you in the hope you feel as much horrified love for it as I do.


Well, I'd like to start by extending a most sincere and heartfelt thank you to Rio here for so sweetly sharing his hairy armpit with us today, it's what I most love to see on my Friday mornings. This is usually how my plan for a Friday goes:

Wake up.

Brush teeth.

Change from nighttime sweatpants to daytime sweatpants like the super attractive and fashionable work-from-home professional that I am.

Head downstairs.

Find necessary stash of monstrous hairy armpit pictures and stare longingly at them. I find I often have to limit myself to only a minute or two of ogling time, it's best to really pace myself so that all the glorious armpit-ness lasts that much longer and I don't have go without. Male armpit deprivation would be tragic and possibly fatal.

Alas, luckily for all of us, Rio seems to have enough pit action to last us all for a long, long time. Set. For. Life. I guess I just don't quite understand the cropping on this picture. Why have they hacked his face in half, cut him off at his hairless groin, and chopped his chest in two to leave us with only his prominently displayed underarm and his enormous right pectoral (complete with nipple this time, so that's at least a bonus)? Are oversized pecs and hairy underarms aphrodisiacs I'm completely unaware of? Clearly, knowledgeable sexual vixen I am not.

I have a short anecdote to share with all of you while I let the general strangeness of this cover wash over you. When I first met my husband's brother, he thought the best way for me to really get to know him was to take my head, shove it in his (fortunately clothed) armpit, and rub it around a bit, calling the whole disgusting situation a "pit stop". Ungh. My brother-in-law was very, very wrong about this being an adequate way of introducing himself even though he and my husband thought it was hilarious. I was traumatized. TRAUMATIZED! So now, when looking at this cover, I can't help but wonder if his method of seduction somehow involves a pit stop. If so, I'm guessing the "Tales of the Shareem" are extraordinarily short stories because Rio is just setting himself up for epic failure with this tactic.

Do special pheromones waft from his pit? Is that why he's sharing it with us so proudly? Do we catch a whiff and then find ourselves suddenly nose to massive underarm, high on Rio hair stench? I may have just thrown up in my mouth a little bit. This is the story of he of the venus-fly-trap-underarm, luring women in with his special pit-tastic scent before pouncing on them and then distracting them further with his colossal moob so they are at his complete romantic mercy. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at the publisher when that pitch is made.

Just because I know you are all dying to know what synopsis could possibly accompany such a piece of artwork, I'll leave you in suspense no longer:

Rio. A Level Three Shareem complete with black leather, handcuffs and a whip.

Genetically programmed to provide every woman's wildest fantasy, Rio is the ultimate Dom. His bad-boy smile and Shareem-blue eyes can make the most frigid woman fall to her knees and beg him to be gentle.

But not too gentle.

Nella, Princess of Ariel, has never heard of Shareem. She sees Rio only as the man who rescues her from assassination and who hides her until she can get back to her family. A friend.

But Rio can't fight his programming, and before long he's taking the sexy princess aside to give her some very interesting lessons in trust . . . never dreaming she's giving him lessons in love.

I see no leather on that cover. No handcuffs. No whip. All I see is an armpit. Perhaps a "genetically programmed" armpit, but an armpit nonetheless. Oh Nella, you are in for the surprise of a lifetime my dear, prepare to get a lesson in the art of the pit-stop.

Happy Friday Everyone!