Shelf Candy Saturday No. 206: Beauty of the Beast, by Rachel L. Demeter

Welcome to Shelf Candy Saturday!

This is my weekly feature

showcasing beautiful covers!

It also provides information, 
if available, on their 
very talented creators!

Here's my choice for this week!

Beauty of the Beast
 (Fairy Tale Retellings, Book 1)
Rachel L. Demeter 
Trade Paperback, 342  pages
CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform
February 19, 2017
   Fairy Tale Retellings, Fantasy,
Historical Romance    

My Thoughts About This Cover

It was about time I featured a beautiful blue cover again! And this one is an absolutely STUNNING one! It's just such a powerful image -- with a bold, perfectly balanced composition, as well as one of the best, if not THE best, examples of a cover image perfectly matched to the book's title I've ever seen!

These two components of the cover above actually mirror each other -- the twisting, intertwining branches, or rather, gigantic stems of roses with huge thorns, are interlaced with the swirling letters of the title, especially the word "Beast". The graceful swirls of these letters form circular shapes that are paradoxically bold and aggressive. It's as if the letters of the word "Beast" were reinforcing the twisting shapes of the forest of thorns behind them. Some of the thorns overlap the letter swirls, as if trying to cage them in. The same thing is happening with the word "Beauty".

And then there's that glorious blue! It's a bit eerie, and yet, enchanting, with a hint of mystery.

To make this cover rock even more, there are three strategically placed roses -- one left of center, on the top branches of an overarching tree, another in the very middle of the cover, with the word "the" on top of it, and the last in the lower right-hand corner. These roses really stand out amidst the more somber colors of the overall image, even though they're dark themselves. They serve to lead the eye from the upper left of the cover to the lower right, and back again.

This cover gives me a mixture of feelings. While the huge, black stems spiked with thorns, and the roses dripping blood (some of which falls on a couple of the letters in the title) give this cover an ominous air, I also see hints of hope in the light breaking through the maze of thorns and tree branches. It's as if goodness were seeping through a maze of evil.

The black forest of thorns is a dramatic contrast to the beautiful, light-filled background. I see this as a metaphor for Beauty struggling to break through the Beast's apparent darkness. I say "apparent" because the Beast is actually not bad at all. It's his outward appearance that makes him seem monstrous.

The person responsible for all of this cover awesomeness is Sarah Hansen, a book cover designer who started her own company -- Okay Creations, several years ago. She studied Fine Arts in college, later spending 11 years designing Mylar balloons. After that, she went out on her own. 

Hansen's covers have graced books that have been on the bestselling lists of The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. You can see some of these covers at the NA Alley Interview below. Her company regularly creates covers for the big six publishers, and their portfolio has increased to over a thousand covers. They also create author and blog branding. 

This brilliant illustrator/designer has now been added to my growing list of great cover artists!

Online Links

Website

Okay Creations: Facebook
NA Alley: Interview

Okay Creations: Twitter 

 

What do you think of this 
week's cover?
Please leave a comment
and let me know!