Tag: middle grade fiction

First Lines Friday

First Lines Friday

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!

Caidyn will be in blue.
Chantel will be in purple.

TW: grief, child death, and near death (yes, in these first few lines)

Dear Wenny,

I died too. Not when the truck first hit us, but right after in the hospital. I had a broken leg and a ruptured spleen, and I was bleeding inside and outside. I was pretty messed up by the truck, and while they were trying to fix me, my heart stopped for a whole ten minutes.

When I was a kid, this was, no joke, one of my favorite books. A book that involves grief and child death was one of my favorites. Kind of crazy, tbh. But, no joke, I loved it. I’ve never met anyone else who has read it, though. None of my friends have this book added on Goodreads.

It is…

Wenny Has Wings

But, seriously, this book is so good. I’ve read it quite a few times over the years and it’s always held up. However, I don’t think that I’ve read this book since middle school. So, I’m making time in June to read this again!

Later, they would blame what happened on the little wooden horses. 

Estrella had found them when she was five, the set of them dust-frosted and forgotten on a high shelf. They had been small enough to fit in her hands, carved wooden wings sprouting from their painted backs. 

Trust me, I wanted to go further than that, but I decided to stop early to give myself and all of our followers a tease. This is the next book I plan to start reading so I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. 

I won’t leave you guys guessing on the book, though. 

It’s…

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

Wild Beauty cover

Okay, first of all, I want to talk about how this is my favorite Owlcrate exclusive cover ever. I love it so much and I love the color change. I have the physical book in front of me and the flowers are raised. It’s just gorgeous and perfect. I’m ashamed I haven’t read this already. I’m familiar with Anna-Marie McLemore’s work as well and while I’ve never been drawn to magical realism, I am drawn to lyrical writing. I’m excited to start reading this as it features beautiful writing and queer ladies. This book was made for me. 

Talk to us!

Did any of these books catch your eye based on the first lines? Let us know!

 

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