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.