Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Bella: Our Differences

Title: Our Differences

Author: thesoupernovva

Reviewer: SilasNevrin

Cover Art: 2/5

Your cover just made me think of one word. Eh. It feels like no effort was put into this, maybe there was—but it doesn't feel that way.

It looks like you just slapped text with two types of font onto a photograph of two girls and a sticker as well.

This is my first impression, without having read the summary. Now at this moment in time I don't know anything about your story apart from the title and the author's name.

The stock image shows two girls, both appearing different at first glance. But that's just about everything I get from the photo. If I had seen that cover as I was scrolling through my home page—I would keep scrolling.

So here's what I think you should do:

Find an image that clearly represents your story but doesn't overload the reader visually. The image you used while including two different girls-so I see the reasoning- gives many different colours as well and just doesn't look clean cut enough for a book cover. You don't have to just have two girls in the same setting they were photographed in—try using some photo editing (I recommend PicsArt) to chop some girls from different photographs, place them onto a less crowded background and create a sort of theme with your colour scheme. The colours should try and match the interpretation of your novel.

For example: I wouldn't use the colour pale pink for a title such as- Murder at 9. It just doesn't fit.

It's nice when colours compliment each other on covers like white and pink, blue and black etc. I do not like seeing orange and bright green on a cover unless it's about a fire princess sitting in a field.

Now, the fonts you used on the cover. Granted the necessary information was there but I honestly hate the font you chose for the extras.

The main title font—I like. It's cute and rounded, gives you a nice feeling of neatness and makes you think of girls essentially. But when put infront of a crowded picture with no cohesion, you lose the ability to see what the font clearly says. This is the trouble with using a font that takes a second longer to understand. Your font fades into the background and it honestly just looks like a bunch of squiggles.

Keep the font—ditch the photo.

Your extras, I like the phrase two cliques, one friendship it's nice and gives me a little teaser before I read the summary. But that font, holy mother of Mary are you trying to give me a heart attack? Ditch it, ditch it now. For your extras like your author name and excerpts you should use a simplistic, small font if you're going for something different to the title font.

It shouldn't stand out more than the title. That's a big red flag. The title is the big shazam of your cover and if it's being overshadowed by an excerpt? Oh dear no.

Choose a small font, clean cut with harsh lines, not squiggly or round and fluffy.

Title: 5/5

Sometimes it's really easy to get the title wrong for your novel.

But in this case—I like the title, it's short, it's snappy. It tells me exactly what I need to know without stuffing a whole bunch of fluff down my throat.