The Great Romance Book Cover Debate: Realistic or Cutesy?

Everyone loves a good book cover. This is clearly shown when plenty of people buy multiple copies of the same book just so they can admire different covers and their prettiness. However, some romance book covers are just ridiculous. I have touched upon some of this before, but I thought a designated post was necessary for this rant. Let me know what you think after reading…

It feels like every other book genre has a cover that matches the book and gives the right vibes, but with a romance novel, the cover always gives off the wrong idea (especially to people who don’t read the books often!). It tends to be an image of a shirtless oiled up man, because seriously they look too shiny to be anything else, showing off his six-pack slap bang in the middle of my front cover. I suppose it does follow the same old rules, sex sells, and when you actually deep dive into it the book covers are giving the right vibes, but personally, and potentially to a lot of other readers worldwide, it’s tacky. To have a beautiful story of self-discovery, love, and resilience ruined by a shirtless man on the front cover gives the wrong impression of it content (even though sometimes there is steamy moments we don’t want everyone to know that 😳).

I have to give credit to the industry though, because a lot of the books I see on the bookshelves in the UK, don’t tend to have this type of design on the cover. I assume this is because they realise it’s not what the readers want. But my Kindle—my god—is filled with covers like this. Maybe this says something more about me than the book industry, with the shirtless men filling folders on my Kindle app, but it’s not because I like it. I get the books because the blurbs speak to me, and then when I finally read it, the characters speak to me. I mean, sometimes I even forget that the covers are images of shirtless men. Sometimes, even an image of women in provocative clothing under the shirtless man. The ogling of the male body on the covers is a whole other conversation in itself, but I’m not a big fan of these types of covers. Especially when there is a jump scare. I mean, sometimes, I just want to read my books out in public, but then…bam…a shirtless man appears on my screen in full view of everyone. I have to swipe really quickly. It’s super…awkward. 😅

I think that leads nicely into my next point. The cartoon covers. These are my absolute favourite; I feel like they encompass the love story in all the right ways. Not only does it give me a little bit of an idea about what the characters look like (I can’t imagine faces when they are described – they’re kind of just blobs to me), but it lessens the stigma that surrounds romance novels. Being in public, with certain books and around certain people, is setting people up for a whole lot of judgement. However, there are plenty of critiques to these covers as well. I do understand their reasoning with kids thinking they are acceptable for them to read, but then why can’t an adult have a little bit of a fantasy – I mean that’s why we read isn’t it? Escapism? These covers have been popping up more in the last couple of years, with my local stores selling these books. They end up drawing me in more than others, so someone has got to be doing something right.

However, people sometimes just don’t like the cutesy covers just as I don’t like the shirtless men on the cover.🤷‍♀️ We are all entitled to our own opinion and the book industry likes to cater for everyone. There is no fix that is needed for this, because in the scheme of things, there is nothing wrong with it. It is a personal thought, that might be shared but also might not be, and that’s okay. As long as we are all allowed to read what we want to read, wherever we want to read it, I don’t have any problems and hopefully nobody else has either.

So, what do you think cutesy or real? 🤔

Until the next chapter,

#BellesBookBabble