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In looking through all of the current International Hidden Legacy covers I have found a few that I feel conflicted about or frankly probably should have made the worst covers list. Many of these are interesting nonetheless and I'm curious where everyone else lands on them.
Without further ado - here is the list.
Covers 1-6 - Original Japanese covers. I find these original covers fascinating because of how you can see the marketing of the covers change over time. Nevada's trilogy was released in the late 2010s and the covers are decidedly Harlequin and cheap looking then after a gap, they get to Catalina's books in the 2020s and you can see a radical shift to marketing the series as romantic detective fiction with a completely different cover style. The choice to market each subtrilogy completely differently is a fascinating choice and if I had to speculate its because the publisher might not have fully understood the genre of these books in 2017 and only realized after the first trilogy that it wasn't a straightforward harlequin romance. It's possible they only paid attention to these nuances in the genre after the series had gained some initial success and could do well in the romantic mystery market. IA's books often baffle international publishers this way because they can be hard to classify neatly into romance, fantasy, mystery etc. You can tell the publisher quickly realized this disconnect between the series's marketing because only 1 year after Ruby Fever was published in Japan they started their redesign of the entire series which resulted in the minimalist flower and gemstone covers I featured in the last two posts. The manga style cover of Ruby Fever was only on the market for 3 years before being changed. Some part of me would love to have seen them do new covers for Nevada's trilogy in the style of Catalina's books.
Covers 7-10 - New French covers. The identity crisis of this series is also reflected in the French publisher's choices for the series. The first 3 books in France were also published with dramatic Harlequin-esque covers (that I put on my worst list), but presumably as the market or their understanding of the series genre changed they decided on a design pivot for Catalina's trilogy. These covers are decidedly very artistic and were designed by experienced graphic designer Mikhail Bakunovich (who apparently has an affinity for fire imagery). I would quite like them in an art gallery, but I wouldn't pick it up at the store and they don't feel like they convey the vibe or content of the series at all. The art is also not very distinctive or eye-catching a -nespecially since all the covers look similar enough to one another that my brain struggles distinguish them. The Harlequin-esque covers for books 1-3 are also still being sold, so getting at 6 individual books would result in a very mismatched shelf. These didn't make it into the worst list because I feel conflicted between respecting the art and hating it.
Covers 11-13 - Hebrew alternate covers. As we can all tell by now, the Hebrew publisher loves this series and at some point made these illustrated alternative covers. But I don't like the art in this case. This is one of those incredibly rare occasions where a photoshopped cover with a person on it looks better to me than hand-drawn art. These covers look much plainer, and as is always the risk with hand-drawn art for me the style doesn't work and the human features just don't feel right to me. This might be a highly individual issue, but it leaves me unsure how to classify these.
How do all of you feel about these? And for the Japanese and French covers which of the styles would you prefer on your shelf?
After this post I have no more HL covers I haven't posted on here (until new ones come out). I hope you've enjoyed the tour and my relentless posting on this topic!
My previous posts on other hidden legacies covers can be found here:
- Unfortunate Edge and Hidden Legacy covers - My least fave covers
- My favourite new Hidden Legacy covers (Polish covers) - My favourite covers
- Hidden Legacy Cover Appreciation (Part 1) - Nevada's Trilogy and the Romantasy of it All -
- Hidden Legacy Cover Appreciation (Part 2) - Catalina's Trilogy (and bonus Nevada covers)