A pretty gold book

I found this book I Wonder by Marian Bantjes:

front cover

back cover

The book is very luxurious, with a cloth hardbound cover, gilded edges, and gold and silver leaf throughout (probably imitation gold leaf rather than actual gold). The paper is coated and glossy. Design is clearly the focus of this book, rather than the text, and the book is a lovely object.

The text frame on each double page spread is small and proportionately narrower than the page. Reading is difficult because of the distraction of the beautiful designs and also because of frequent use of a heavy, script-like serif typeface. I'm not sure who this book's target market is - perhaps people interested in design? But the size of the book (similar to a large paperback) seems unsuited to this purpose - this kind of book would normally be in a larger 'coffee-table book' format.