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:
There were tales that only the island knew. Ones that had never been told. I knew, because I was one of them.
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
The protagonists are Emery and August.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Adrienne Young.
The First Lines Friday book is:
Spells for Forgetting
About the Book:
Title: Spells for Forgetting
Author: Adrienne Young
Page Length: 352
Publication Date: Sept. 27, 2022
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Synopsis: A rural island community steeped in the mystical superstitions of its founders and haunted by an unsolved murder is upended by the return of the suspected killer in this deeply atmospheric novel.
Emery Blackwood’s life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily. Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among the community that fractured her world in two. She’d once longed to run away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saiorse Island and chase new dreams; now, she maintains her late mother’s tea shop and cares for her ailing father. But just as the island, rooted in folklore and tradition, begins to show signs of strange happenings, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that no one wants to remember.
August Salt knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night that changed everything. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from the past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises that span generations threatens to reveal the truth behind Lily’s death once and for all.
Evocative and compelling, Spells for Forgetting is a vivid exploration of lost love and the unraveling of a small town and its many secrets.
Have you read Spells for Forgetting? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
Great first lines! I can’t wait to read this one 😍
I hope you enjoy it when you read it, Dini!
That’s a great first line. I’m hoping to read this one, Julie.
Ooooh, I hope you like it!