
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:
Julia’s world was blue.
Blue was everything. Blue was safe. Blue was home.
How she longed to see red.
Do you recognize the lines?

Hint: It’s a book by Josie Jaffries.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint: It’s a BBYNA 2020 finalist!

The First Lines Friday book is:
The Gilded King by Josie Jaffrey
About the Book:

Title: The Gilded King
Author: Josie Jaffrey
Series: Sovereign #1
Page Length: 303
Publication Date: June 25, 2018
Synopsis: In the Blue, the world’s last city, all is not well.
Julia is stuck within its walls. She serves the nobility from a distance until she meets Lucas, a boy who believes in fairytales that Julia’s world can’t accommodate. The Blue is her prison, not her castle, and she’d escape into the trees if she didn’t know that contamination and death awaited humanity outside.
But not everyone in the Blue is human, and not everyone can be contained.
Beyond the city’s boundaries, in the wild forests of the Red, Cameron has precious little humanity left to lose. As he searches for a lost queen, he finds an enemy rising that he thought long dead. An enemy that the humans have forgotten how to fight.
One way or another, the walls of the Blue are coming down. The only question is what side you’ll be on when they do.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository


This is such a unique and immersive read, and I loved the characters!!! Have you read The Gilded King? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
I’ve had this on my kindle for about a year now and I need to read it!
It’s a good one! I’m definitely excited to pick up the next book in the series!
This sounds awesome! I love Josie Jaffrey.
It’s my first by Jarrey, but it definitely won’t be my last!