The Book Cover Plagiarism Drama Nobody Expected

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]So, we all know that sometimes fans are crazy and frequently it seems like increasingly so, they often make accusations against posing IP or even against members of the same IP with a different opinion. One such example are team peeta fans attacking Ali Hazelwood for liking Gail more in the Hunger Games. There is also the example which I haven't made a video on this but Meredith Novako did and it's very good but fans of the powerless series accusing the Red Queen series of being plagiarism when really Red Queen was published a decade before Powerless. Well, it's it's happening again. It's happening again.

[00:01:06]My name is Taylor Rose and welcome back to my channel where we talk about everything reading and writing. I don't know. It's kind of absolutely mind-boggling. I I understand having this gut reaction to seeing something new to you and thinking, "Oh my god, that's just a ripoff of whatever." or wow, that's so similar to this other series, this other book, this other movie. But usually I will then Google when did X come out, movie Y to see like when was it made? Is it based off of another form of media like a movie based off a book or a book based off a comic or something to figure out like, oh, that was actually first. An example of this, I guess, is when I was in high school, I was very obsessed with music in German. So, German music. So, I was listening to Rammstein and Oomph a lot.

[00:02:10]And just listening to them, I assumed that like based off the instrumentation and the audio quality, like I I assumed Rammstein was older than Oomph because it's like, you know, you can like listen to music and realize like, oh yeah, that's from the8s. That's the vibe I got from Rammstein. And then I Googled and it turns out that Oomph is much older and actually inspired the guys who are in Ramstein.

[00:02:39]So that that was mindboggling to me. So it's like I'll do that with books and movies and find out this information so I don't go on the internet and declare, "Oh my god, I can't believe Peter Pan ripped off Hook like egregious, you know." Anyways, the books that we are talking about today are Face Off by Chelsea Certo and Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid.

[00:03:05]You've probably heard of at least Heated Rivalry. There is an extremely viral television show now um that people are going crazy over. Essentially, they're both hockey romances. Face Off is a heterosexual couple, so a man and a woman hockey player. Whereas Heated Rivalry is I don't I don't want to say unique because I'm not a hockey romance enthusiast, but it is kind of unique in being the the face of gay hockey, at least as far as the general public is concerned. So, of course, since there's now this television show for Heated Rivalry, Heated Rivalry fans are pretty defensive.

[00:03:56]There have been several documented cases of people having heated rivalry viewing parties, but when gay men show up for these parties, they are excluded or even told to leave by the rest of the party, which happens to be straight women. So, that's a big discussion that has been going on in regards to like the idea that heated rivalry fans are doing too much, which while I I'm not going to poo poo safe spaces for women, I I full hardly support those. But I do think it is misguided to try and claim what is one of few very prominent queer pieces of media and trying to then exclude the audience or the demographic of its main characters. I don't really think that needs to be up for debate. There have also been anecdotal discussions about people trying to insist that heated rivalry is the hockey romance when people who love hockey romance are like, "No, it's been around for a while." And Rachel Reed did not invent hockey romance, guys. Stephanie Meyer didn't in invent vampires.

[00:05:16]So, they are now accusing Chelsea Curto of copying Heated Rivalries cover. Let's look into it. Oh my god, this cat just I don't know what he wants. So on April 13th, so a week prior to me recording this, Chelsea Certo released a statement on threads in the wake of these allegations where she says the following. Hi everyone. I'm not on Twitter or whatever it's called these days, but I do hope this post reaches there so I can further clarify some things that I've seen.

[00:05:56]Watching words like nasty, thief, blatant copying, and plagiarism tossed around makes me sick, so I want to be direct. Face Off, published in May 2024.

[00:06:08]The design for Faceoff's cover began in January 2024, 11 months prior to the re-release of revamped paperback editions of a different hockey series, which came with new covers. That re-release happened in November 2024. At the time of my cover design and publication, there was not an illustration or cover out there that featured the same poses/background as Face Off. My artist created original artwork, and I stand by that. I am so happy to see the enthusiasm, attention, and excitement from millions of longtime readers, new readers, and TV watchers for an LGBTQ plus centered hockey universe. So, here she's talking about heated rivalry. Frankly, we need more of it. And it's encouraging and hopeful that a story like this reached mainstream media with the ferocity that it did. With that ferocity comes a fandom willing to defend the thing they love so preciously or so preciously love and rightfully so.

[00:07:07]You want to make sure that what you care about is protected. This is really nice of her so far. I would caution people to remember within that excitement, it's important and crucial to check facts before jumping to conclusions or forming opinions about other things that exist in the world. Yeah, powerless fans.

[00:07:26]Again, the other cover was not available when Face Off was published. I also hadn't had the chance to read the books that everyone is so excited about. I've barely read 10 books in the last year.

[00:07:36]But the last thing I'd ever do is take a story and make it straight for my own benefit. That's extremely harmful to a marginalized community I proudly support with my whole chest. I do my best to stay out of reader spaces. I don't care what people say about my writing or if my books aren't for them. But when my character and the character of the people I work with is called into question, I feel compelled to say something publicly despite the attention it might bring. Totally understandable.

[00:08:01]Like when your integrity is being questioned like that, I don't blame her at all. I might have more to share on this matter in the coming days, but for right now, this is all I'm going to say.

[00:08:10]I'm probably going to take a small step back from social media for a minute because the hateful vitriol that's been directed at me is a lot to process with everything else that's happening in the world. I appreciate those of you who have been so kind and I encourage you to continue that kindness during any further conversations that might arise.

[00:08:27]And that is so nice of her. I don't know. When people accuse me of lying or stealing, I get extremely fired up. So, props to her for maintaining her dignity in this situation. And people in the comments were largely supportive of Chelsea. We have books with back here who says two thoughts. One, I've read two books, one hockey, one football with the same cover model in the the same pose. It made me giggle for a minute that I moved on.

[00:08:58]Two, I've been in fandoms since the early tweenhood. Think Twilight, team Jacob versus team Edward. I think for some reason this is their first fandom and the insane ferocity, great word choice they have and the weird parasocial relationships they're pulling from have been some of the worst I've seen in a long time. I know I saw a thread the other day about someone getting the actors faces tattooed on them, which I don't know. I think that's a big big leap, especially when things get readapted in different forms so frequently. I don't know. I mean, okay, that's a little judgmental of me, but like personally, I I wouldn't want to tie myself down to a single iteration of an IP I love, you know, like I enjoy Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I prefer the Kiara Nightly version from 2005 or 2008 or whatever, but I don't know. I guess I I personally would rather just have more of a faceless symbol of something. But I saw a similar thread where someone was saying that they wanted to go get their hair done by one of the main actors girlfriends because her hands have touched him, which is kind of creepy.

[00:10:17]And then there's this tweet here by lit Jersey girl that says, "Owen, people are tiresome. Being a librarian, I can count so many cover design trends and not once did I ever think they stole from one another." Do you know how many book covers are just a woman's back with the title saying she's someone's wife?

[00:10:34]Good point. Good point. Chelsea's artist did come forward and make her own statement on the same day, retweeting or re-sharing Chelsea's. And the artist Quinn added, "Hey all, I would never trace another artist's work and give it to a publisher or author.

[00:10:54]Authors deserve to have their stories honored with original artwork. With AI, declining jobs, and all of the other barriers artists and authors are facing, we need to uplift and support each other now more than ever. Yes, I agree. The following day, Chelsea made another statement. Chloe, my artist for face off, explains the cover situation more very eloquently here, including screenshots of timelines and dates. I'm so appreciative of her directness to the truth and her poise in what's been a journey we and her poise in what's been a journey we've been well aware about behind the scenes. I will not be commenting further on the events that have transpired. Nor will I give any merit to the claims of blatant tracing when they are so absurdly wrong. I'm fine. And to those who eagerly spewed hatred my way, kindness is free. And you can see double hockey sticks here saying LMFAO. Wait, so after all this, it was the HR illustrator that taste I hated here. And I'll be honest, I could not find what Chelsea's referring to here going through Khloe Quinn's threads history. Um, I went back several weeks even though clearly she's referencing something recent. So maybe it's something that has since been deleted.

[00:12:00]Obviously I was 24 hours behind the trend there. So after that, Quinn did share these composite images that prove her position, I guess, in terms of the allegations. She said, "Unfortunately, authors usually receive the first wave of online drama. Chelsea is one of the kindest authors I have worked with. And when people started being mean to her, I wanted to explain everything clearly.

[00:12:24]She has my back and I have hers. After this, I'm also done commenting on the discourse.

[00:12:29]So, I'm I'm assuming after this Quinn went back and deleted something, but in any case, so first I'm going to show you the covers individually. Here we have the cover of Face Off by Chelsea Herto.

[00:12:43]Pretty ba basic, I guess. It's that cartoony style that we see, you know, that's really popular in romances nowadays. Blue. They're obviously on the same team. Pretty normal hockey cover.

[00:12:56]Nothing nothing crazy. After some research, this pose, this setup, this form is called a face off in hockey. So, it makes sense that a book called Face Off about hockey would feature a hockey face off on the cover. Go figure. Here we have Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reed.

[00:13:18]So you you can see obviously their uniforms are different. They're on opposing teams. Still lots of blue, but it's a hockey rink with ice. Can't really avoid that. They look the same.

[00:13:30]Same pose. Same pose. But again, it's a faceoff, which is a move. A move. I don't know. I'm not a sports person, but like it's a formation in hockey. It's not like they made this up. It is a little confusing because if you go on Goodreads and look at Heated Rivalry, they do have an edition from 2023 with the cover as well as 2024, 2025, 2019 for the audio book and 2026 for a Spanish version that all feature this cover. However, you can see that Rachel Reid announced the release of this cover on her Instagram 80 weeks ago. It was a new series of covers for the entire series of books.

[00:14:23]And her caption states that these would be released November 26th of this year.

[00:14:28]So 80 weeks ago would have been at some point October 2024, right? So those new covers per the caption were being released in November 2024. So even if you look at good readads and see that the covers are on the 2023 version of several audio book and whatever, that's not actually when those covers were associated with the book at all. did not exist at that point. The first time anyone heard about it would have been October 2024 per Rachel Reed's Instagram. Right. So, Face Off was published May 30th, 2024.

[00:15:10]So far, all of this evidence lines up with what Chelsea posted on threads.

[00:15:15]Right.

[00:15:16]So, her cover design started almost a year before the release, the announcement of the new covers for Heated Rivalry. And so, here are the images that Quinn, the artist, shared showing the similarities.

[00:15:35]And this is, you know, after it was stated by both parties which came first.

[00:15:42]So, you can read into whatever implications you want with that. Right.

[00:15:46]So, first we line up the ring. So, you can see that the proportions and the angle of the hockey rink in both of these illustrations is the same. And you might be thinking like, "Oh, but all hockey rings look the same." They do, but what she's getting at here is that the angle at which we are viewing the ice is the same for both pretty much.

[00:16:07]You can see one of them is a little tighter there in the side curve, but angle of the center line, etc. very similar. They line up Maverick and Shane. So, those are two of the a main character from each series. They've zoomed in, balanced both of these on top of each other about the same size. So, obviously the hockey stick's different, but otherwise, same pose. The angle of the heads is different. It's mainly the body that's very similar. Then Emmy and Ilia. So that's the other half of the main couple for both series. And obviously this one is pretty different in that Ilia is huge compared to Emmy. Uh Emmy is much smaller than Maverick versus Ilia is slightly larger than Shane. It is what it is. Oh my god, my brain just totally erased itself. The hockey stick is a lot closer in this one. Again, the pose is very similar, different type of uniform.

[00:17:18]This one, the angle of the head and face is a lot closer. And that's one thing a lot of people kind of pointed out that they both have a little dangly bit of hair out the front. I couldn't tell you if this is something established in the stories or not. It might. So, in response to Quinn's photo collage, showing how similar the covers are, we have this user here, Amazing, who shared this stock photo of some hockey players. And I will say based off the hockey sticks, this this has to be this has to be what Quinn was referencing off of. But you see the short little hockey stick right there. They took off the helmets um for hair purposes. But yeah, it obviously this is the exact pose. So this had to have been what Quinn was referencing and is most likely what the artist or heated rivalry was referencing in my opinion. I think probably they just both used the same reference. Amazing says, "One Google search and a little scroll got me this Adobe stock photo. Rival hockey player stock photo." So, when both are so similar to this stock photo, I don't think you can accuse one of plagiarizing the other, unless there's some other evidence that comes to light, proving it was copying from the other cover. Toy loves Happily Ever Afters posted, "Yes, it is unprofessional as hell to accuse a cover artist of plagiarizing the cover art you drew because you're upset." And I get why truly when you could loop both covers over a generic stock photo of the same sport/same pose, which someone did and they are identical, lmao, and they're all three the same because the concept is actually not unique at all.

[00:19:13]But here we are. Idk man, maybe we shouldn't accuse anyone of plagiarism with nothing more than a thought and a prayer.

[00:19:21]So, here she she's basically saying she doesn't appreciate Quinn sharing her evidence that her copy was covered or that her cover was copied, which I get it. Um, I mean, I think the timeline was more than enough to prove her innocence, but I totally understand overreacting to kind of prove your integrity. Here we have Gia Reeds. Now, she's one of several comments I saw mentioning the hair curl, right? The drawing matches to the curl of the hair in the characters.

[00:19:56]Also, she didn't do it out of nowhere.

[00:19:57]She did it because people were accusing her of doing the same. She was being accused first, so it's not shocking that she would come up with evidence to defend herself. The first mention of this that I can see was off of the romance books Reddit, right? Where you can see that this user reading rabbit hole posed the question, "Were these covers illustrated by the same person?"

[00:20:27]Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reed and Face Off by Chelsea Curtto. The cover the covers of these books showed up on my Kindle app. Second photo. I own Heated Rivalry and Face Off was recommended based on my library. The longer I stare at these, the more it looks like their poses are damn near identical. Are y'all seeing the same thing? Do they have the same illustrator? Which if they were done by the same illustrator, I would not be happy as the author, like you reused my cover for someone else. Seems like Face Off was published May 2024 with seemingly this cover. He did Rivalry was published April 2023 with a different cover, and the cover scene here was announced by Rachel in October 2024. I'd love to know y'all's thoughts or if you have any insight because these look so similar. And so here they are comparing the two covers, which yeah, they do look so similar. And then this was proof that like they owned Heated Rivalry and then Face Off was recommended to them. The comments pretty much all say similar things. It's a hockey faceoff. It's just a way of restarting the game and also a pretty good way to show a rivalry, lol.

[00:21:29]And the line/ circle is center ice.

[00:21:31]seems pretty standard. I don't think this is a copycat. The artist probably just used the same reference photos. If you Google hockey face off, which is what is done at the beginning of every game when the puck drops, you will find dozens of photos from real life that look just like these. It's a standard pose. It's like saying that two clinch covers are identical because in both of them, the characters are clinching.

[00:21:53]That's just what a face off looks like.

[00:21:55]Um, so I'm assuming they're talking about another formation pose setup in hockey. Um, definitely not the same illustrator. The style is very different, even if the pose is similar.

[00:22:05]I know the cover of Face Off is by Khloe Quinn, who's Quinosaurus on Instagram.

[00:22:09]I'm not sure if Rachel Reed has her illustrator tag somewhere on her socials, but it's not Khloe Quinn. And some more comments say the poses aren't unique to the Curtis book, though. I think they meant Certo. Um, it's a real life thing in hockey. And there's also always and also there's always specific stock poses for covers. Look at crime.

[00:22:25]The ubiquitous back of a woman wearing a long coat is on so many authors books.

[00:22:29]It's a stock cover for crime. Same with clinch poses. Oh, maybe they're talking about wrestling. I don't know, guys. I'm not a sports person. I feel like I've seen a lot of photos with this blocking.

[00:22:39]They probably just reference similar photos. Edit. If y'all look further in the thread, I was very wrong. It was downright traced.

[00:22:45]So, this person doesn't agree that it's a stock photo. And of course, OP chimes in. Now, that feels like it's most likely. Obviously, it's a super standard hockey pose to illustrate, but the nuances of each person's pose looks identical to me. It would make sense if that's because the reference photo is the same. One of the comments says that Heated Rivalry's cover is by the artist Monica Row. And someone else states that in Heated Rivalry, both players are centers. So, yeah, they do that a lot.

[00:23:09]Given the other book is called Face Off, that's the joke there. Haven't read it, maybe they are also centers. Yeah, and looking through all the other comments, they are agreeing that faceoffs are common in hockey and this match is a reference photo, not necessarily like just the other cover. So, I don't know.

[00:23:28]I feel bad that two people have been pulled into this sort of stressful accusation because of course, you know, the other party is not really harmed in this. just like with Powerless, all the Powerless fans still going after Red Queen and the Powerless author has never made a statement and the poor author of Red Queen has to um Victoria Aviard repeatedly has to make statements like, "Hey, my book published first." I mean, as of filming, I never found a statement by Rachel Reed. Um it's possible she has made one, but not on my cursory glance around.

[00:24:06]While I do think that maybe Maybe Quinn was a little aggressive in her posting of the two covers overlapping. I do think with the reveal of the reference photo that is also identical to the covers that kind of for least closes the topic. Um I think it's an unfortunate unfortunate case of coincidence.

[00:24:31]But what do you think? Do you think they both have the same reference photo or do you think one artist copied the other?

[00:24:38]Let me know in the comments down below.

[00:24:40]That's all for now. I will see you next time.