Cotton-Candy Covers

Robin Lee Hatcher and Lorna Seilstad write books which are so far beyond the boundaries of my normal reading you'd need a passport to visit them.  "Romance" and "inspirational" are the adjectives most often used to describe novels like Making Waves and A Vote of Confidence.  Not that I have anything against Christianity or hearts-and-flowers in and of themselves, but when it comes to reading novels coated in one or both of those topics, I'll generally bypass them in favor of something by Cormac McCarthy.

And yet....

And yet I find myself drawn to those two books--as well as A Great Catch and Fit to be Tied--in the same way that the Milennium Falcon was drawn to the Death Star by a tractor beam.  I cannot resist the force of the bright, beautiful cover designs.  Never mind what's inside the books, I only care about that "spunky suffragist" casually tossing a ball in her right hand, smiling me into the pages.

It's the beginning of a new century at Lake Manawa resort in Iowa, but some things never change.  When Emily Graham's meddlesome aunts and grandmother take it upon themselves to find her a husband among the resort guests, the spunky suffragist is determined to politely decline each and every suitor.  She has neither the time nor the need for a man in her busy life.  Carter Stockton, a recent college graduate and a pitcher for the Manawa Owls baseball team, intends to enjoy every minute of the summer before he is forced into the straitlaced business world of his father.  When their worlds collide, neither Emily nor Carter could have guessed what would come next.  Will Carter strike out?  Or will Emily cast her vote for a love that might cost her dreams?  The perfect summer novel, A Great Catch will enchant you with its breezy setting and endearing characters.

Maybe so...but all the same, I've got my treacle-resistant suit of armor on.

I'm not sure who designed the covers of Ms. Seilstad's Lake Manawa novels, but after a little Googling, I discovered the illustrator for Hatcher's "Sisters of Bethlehem" series was Aleta Rafton, an artist who specializes in urban fantasy, paranormal, and Gothic-ladies-fleeing-mist-shrouded-castles cover designs.  Here are her covers for two of Hatcher's novels:

These are the book world's version of the cotton-candy booth at the county fair.  I cannot pass them up.

And so dear reader, I downloaded them.