It's Back: Cover Critique Friday

Hey Everyone!

Well, it's that time again. You've all been very patient with me since I had to do away with the cover critiques temporarily to get caught up on reviews and book tours, but the wait is over! To celebrate this joyous occasion, I bring you copious amounts of body hair. You. Are. Welcome. Please curb the urge to genuflect as such gestures only serve to embarrass me ;-)

Let's get to the good stuff shall we?

RENT-A-STUD

Words. They escape me. Not only does the title just bring a huge giddy smile to my face, but his chest and torso hair (is torso hair what we'd call it? Belly hair? Ab hair?) pretty much solidifies this book's placement on my list of favorite cover designs ever created. I would like to just focus on the hair itself for a minute before we move on to anything else as it's practically a character unto itself the way it's spreading across every inch of available skin on his pecs and stomach in strange, flat bursts. Does he iron it to get it to lay that flat? Comb it? It's obviously been groomed in some way. Perhaps he has a ritual wherein he brushes it for 100 strokes before he starts his day. Sexiness, thou art a well-coiffed wonder. Are you all forming a line to rent out his services this very minute? Well, you can all get behind me, that furry mass is mine to pet first.

Now, I'm no expert on body hair (shocking, I know), but normally when I've seen men with the sheer volume of hair on their chests that this studly fellow possesses, it doesn't just reach the top of their pecs and the sides of their abs and the come to an abrupt halt. No, it climbs their necks, crosses their shoulders and lovingly wraps around their biceps like a fuzzy vine, always searching as though it has a mind of its own for new places to cover in coarse tufts. Somehow this gentleman has escaped such a fate, his monstrous biceps perhaps threatening the hair with waxing or plucking if it even considers sprouting up on such bulbous masterpieces. His neck and sides are clean and clear as well, though his head seems to have taken on with those long tresses what his arms scared away, so it all evens out apparently. Super.

Just looking at this cover is making me itch, I feel like at any moment his matted hair is going to leap from its rentable home and suction itself to me like the egg-dwelling creatures in Alien vs. Predator. Like possibly my own hair is going to get some ideas after seeing this silky specimen of manhood and decide to grow at such speeds from now on that I too will have to resort to ironing it to get the thickness to cooperate. Deep breaths Jenny, deep breaths, the hair is not stalking you. *does a double take to make sure the fur hasn't moved*

Can we talk about his hands for a minute? The one holding the rose looks freakishly small and disproportionate in comparison to his bulging left arm, but it could be because we can only see 4 fingers and all the flesh up there by his armpit is blending with where his thumb should be. Normally I would let this slide, after all it's greatly overshadowed by the fuzziness of Studly Studlerson, however, when taken in conjunction with his seemingly gargantuan left hand it bears mentioning. I want to say he's just hooking his thumb into a pair of black pants, but if you look between the "A" and "S" in Rent-A-Stud there seem to be some flesh tones there which wouldn't make sense if he were wearing pants unless that area was also part of his hand. If that were the case though, his hand would be more enormous than my poor little brain can even fathom, so is he holding a towel off to one side and we're seeing some upper groin? WHAT IS HAPPENING RENT-A STUD?!

Also, just as a parting thought, I ask you this: where is his right nipple? Shouldn't it be visible? Has the hair swallowed it whole, leaving him a uni-nip? I leave you to ponder that for the rest of the day my friends. Enjoy:)

A special thank you to Felicia of The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog for sending me not one, but two sets of Ellora's Cave playing cards with a different cover like the above on each one. Best. Gift. Ever.