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:
Lady Caroline Astley slipped inside the dark, silent room. At the sight of the naked man across the gallery, she recoiled, choking back a shriek as she sloshed hot candle wax all over her kid leather glove.
The unclothed man did not so much as blink, nor did he attempt to cover himself with the length of cloth draped behind his back. She exhaled, realizing it was a statue.
Do you recognize the lines?
Hint: It’s the first book in a historical romance series.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Courtney McCaskill.
The First Lines Friday book is:
How to Train Your Viscount
About the Book:
Series: The Astley Chronicles #1
Page Length: 346
Publication Date: July 17, 2021
Publisher: Hazel Grove Books
Synopsis: The only one who can help her is the man who broke her heart.
Four years ago, Lady Caroline Astley took one look at Henry Greville, Viscount Thetford, and fell horribly in love, in that particular way you can only fall in love at the age of fifteen.
He didn’t just reject her.
He humiliated her.
But now, in a stroke of rotten luck, he’s the only one who can help her.
It turns out that the “paste” pendant she borrowed from her sister, Anne, was no fake. It’s actually an ancient Egyptian amulet, and now Anne wants to auction it off to save hundreds of widows and orphans. What Caro can’t bear to tell her sister is that the necklace was stolen from right around her neck.
Caro has a few clues, but she doesn’t know an amulet from an obelisk, and the trail has gone cold. Guess who grew up in a house stuffed with Egyptian artifacts? Caro may despise Henry, but she needs him if she’s going to track down the thieves. Which begs the question of which is worse: letting down the orphans or risking her heart all over again.
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Have you read How to Train Your Viscount? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
That opening definitely made me smile.
It;s cute. I just started reading the book and am enjoying it. 🙂