First Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays: June 22, 2018

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First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

 

First Lines Fridays: June 15, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

The Volkking struggled, but his sickness attacked him both day and night, a war band giving the enemy no respite of sleep. From the longest day until harvesttime, the Volkking sickened, and as it was with the King, so was it with his land.

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

 

First Lines Fridays: June 8, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

He knew from the first that this man would know how to hurt him. He had to keep the fear secret, and he couldn’t cry no matter how much he wanted to.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voigt
(Tales of the Kingdom, book 3)

The prospect of freedom is weighted with danger in this tale of high adventure, the third book in the Tales of the Kingdom series from Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt.

Oriel has always stood out as someone who would not bend. No matter how much he has had to endure, the Damall’s cruelty cannot corrupt him. Griff, a boy who has watched and admired Oriel, is the opposite. He has learned to keep out of sight, to bow in the face of force. Yet the two became friends, and together they escaped from the terrors of the island and take with them the Damall’s most prized relic—the beryl, a green gemstone engraved with a falcon, its wings unfolding. But as they seek a new life, it’s not as easy as they’d hoped, for ahead lie raiding Wolfers, rival armies, and unspeakable dangers…

First Lines Fridays: June 1, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

What she saw first was a moving shadow. In the trees that bordered the meadow, among their dark trunks, something moved.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

On Fortunes Wheel by Cynthia Voigt
(Tales of the Kingdom, book 2)

There are some who say that the Lady Fortune has a wheel, and all men are fixed upon it. The wheel turns, and the men rise, or fall, with the turning of the wheel.

Birle has agreed to be wed to the huntsman Muir as an escape from the drudgery of life at her father’s inn — but the moment she looks into the bellflower blue eyes of the man she comes upon stealing one of her father’s boats, Birle knows she cannot marry Muir. Even after she discovers the mysterious stranger is Orien, a Lord and as unreachable to an innkeeper’s daughter as a star, Birle is determined to travel with him as far as he will allow.

Their travels take Birle to a world far from home, a world where Lords may become slaves, where Princes rule by fear, and where Fortune’s Wheel turns more swiftly and dangerously than Birle could have imagined.

Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt’s second novel of the Kingdom, set two generations later than Jackaroo, is a memorable combination of thrilling adventure and heart-stopping romance.

First Lines Fridays: May 25, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

Gwyn stood crowded in among the women. She held the hood of her cloak close around her head, covering her hair, shadowing her face.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt
(Tales of the Kingdom, book 1)

In a fantastical kingdom ravaged by famine and poverty, the prospect of hope lies with a mythical masked hero in this, the first book in the Tales of the Kingdom series from Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt.

In a distant time, a kingdom is starving. With winter upon them, there is little hope, except for the legend of Jackaroo: a masked outlaw who comes at night to aid the destitute and helpless. But Gwyn, the innkeeper’s daughter, is too practical for false hopes. She believes Jackaroo is nothing more than a fairy tale told to keep children hopeful till the next sunrise.

Then Gwyn is forced to seek refuge in an abandoned house, and while scavenging for supplies, she comes across…a mask? A sword? A cloak? Could these belong to the fabled Jackaroo? As Gwyn searches for answers, she discovers that the heart of a hero goes far beyond a mask.

First Lines Fridays: May 18, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.
Always.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

The Truth Beneath the Lies by Amanda Searcy

Fight or Flight.

All Kayla Asher wants to do is run. Run from the government housing complex she calls home. Run from her unstable mother. Run from a desperate job at No Limit Foods. Run to a better, cleaner, safer life. Every day is one day closer to leaving.

All Betsy Hopewell wants to do is survive. Survive the burner phone hidden under her bed. Survive her new rules. Survive a new school with new classmates. Survive being watched. Every minute grants her another moment of life.

But when fate brings Kayla and Betsy together, only one girl will live.

First Lines Fridays: May 4, 2018

Lee6 Comments

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

What was it I wanted to tell you? Was it the new T-shirt-ready saying I came up with:  “There’s no room for demons when you’re self-possessed”?

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher

Infused with Carrie Fisher’s trademark incisive wit and on the heels of Wishful Drinking’s instant New York Times bestselling success, Shockaholic takes readers on another rollicking ride into her crazy life.

There is no shortage of people flocking to hear what Princess Leia has to say. Her previous hardcover, Wishful Drinking, was an instant New York Times bestseller and Carrie was featured everywhere on broadcast media and received rave reviews from coast to coast, including People (4 stars; one of their top 10 books of the year), Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, and scores of others.

Told with the same intimate style, brutal honesty, and uproarious wisdom that placed Wishful Drinking on the New York Times bestseller list for months, Shockaholic is the juicy account of Carrie Fisher’s life, focusing more on the Star Wars years and dishing about the various Hollywood relationships she’s formed since she was chosen to play Princess Leia at only nineteen years old. Fisher delves into the gritty details that made the movie—and herself—such a phenomenal success, admitting, “It isn’t all sweetness and light sabers.”

First Lines Fridays: April 27, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

Suzanne Vale had a problem, and it was the one she least liked thinking about: She’d had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay.
He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

The Best Awful by Carrie Fisher
(Suzanne Vale, book 2)

Suzanne Vale, the Hollywood actress whose drug addictions and rehab rigors were so brilliantly dissected by Carrie Fisher in “Postcards from the Edge,” is back. And this time she has a new problem: She’s had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice. What’s worse, Suzanne’s not sure she has what it takes to be the best mother to her daughter, Honey. She can’t seem to shake the blues from losing Honey’s father, Leland, to Nick — the man who got the man who got away. Or maybe those aren’t the blues, just more symptoms of her sprawling multi-symptom bipolar illness: an illness Suzanne can’t bring herself to take all that seriously, no matter what her doctors say. (After all, how serious can an illness be whose symptoms are spending sprees, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity?) And now, worst of all, under the watchful round eyes of the pills the doctors plied her with, even her friends are starting to find her a little…boring.

The obvious solution is to take a little walk on the wild side. But what starts out as a brief gambol through the scary/fun world of twenty-first-century dating becomes a vigorous jog-trot through the latest drug wonderland — and finally a wild gallop toward a psychotic break and a stay in “the bin.”

Based on a truant’s story, “The Best Awful” is Carrie Fisher’s most powerful and revealing novel: hilarious, moving, and fully informed by the wisdom of a true survivor.

First Lines Fridays: April 20, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
(Suzanne Vale, book 1)

When we first meet the extraordinary young actress Suzanne Vale, she’s feeling like “something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting.” Suzanne is in the harrowing and hilarious throes of drug rehabilitation, trying to understand what happened to her life and how she managed to land in a “drug hospital.”

Just as Fisher’s first film role — the precocious teenager in Shampoo — echoed her own Beverly Hills upbringing, her first book is set within the world she knows better than anyone else: Hollywood. More of a fiction montage than a novel in the conventional sense, this stunning literary debut chronicles Suzanne’s vivid, excruciatingly funny experiences-from the clinic to her coming to terms with life in the outside world. Conversations with her psychiatrist- “What worries me is, what if this guy is really the one for me and I haven’t had enough therapy to be comfortable with having found him?”; a high-concept, eighties-style affair- “The only way to become intimate for me is repeated exposure. My route to intimacy is routine. I establish a pattern with somebody and then I notice when they’re not there?”

Sparked by Suzanne’s — and Carrie Fisher’s — deliciously wry sense of the absurd, Postcards from the Edge is more than a book about stardom and drugs. It is a revealing look at the dangers-and delights-of all our addictions, from money and success to sex and insecurity.

First Lines Fridays: April 13, 2018

LeeLeave a comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

The list arrived after Sloane had been gone two weeks.

Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!

Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson

It was Sloane who yanked Emily out of her shell and made life 100% interesting. But right before what should have been the most epic summer, Sloane just…disappears. All she leaves behind is a to-do list.

On it, thirteen Sloane-inspired tasks that Emily would normally never try. But what if they could bring her best friend back?

Apple picking at night? Okay, easy enough.

Dance until dawn? Sure. Why not?

Kiss a stranger? Um…

Emily now has this unexpected summer, and the help of Frank Porter (totally unexpected), to check things off Sloane’s list. Who knows what she’ll find?

Go skinny-dipping? Wait…what?