First Lines Friday: December 22, 2022

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!

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First Lines:

Edward Astley had failed.

That was the thought that echoed through his head in time with his horse’s hoofbeats as he cantered toward home. He didn’t hold out much hope that he would make it before the storm gathering above him broke.

Perfect. He wouldn’t just be a failure; he would be a failure who was soaked to the bone.

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Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

 It’s the third book in a historical romance series.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint: 

It’s written by Courtney McCaskill.

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The First Lines Friday book is:

The Sea Siren of Broadwater Bottom

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About the Book:

Title: The Sea Siren of Broadwater Bottom

Author: Courtney McCaskill

Series: The Astley Chronicles #3

Page Length: 295

Publication Date: Nov. 18, 2022

Synopsis: Sometimes there’s a fine line between assessing the competition and consorting with the enemy…

Thanks to an imprudent wager made by his younger brother, Edward Astley has to win a classical translation contest being hosted by Oxford University. This means he’ll have to beat the latest star on the literary scene, the anonymous translator whose rendition of On the Sublime is taking Britain by storm. He’s supposed to be studying, but all he can seem to think about is Elissa St. Cyr, the redheaded daughter of his former tutor, who’s every bit as brainy as she is delectable.

Elissa has problems of her own. With her father’s health failing, she’ll soon need to support her mother and sisters through her translation work. And that means she needs to win the Oxford contest, so she can secure the one thing she has never had the opportunity to earn: an academic credential.

To make matters worse, she managed to get stuck in the middle of a pond during a thunderstorm, and the person who happened along to rescue her, witnessing her in the most humiliating moment of her remarkably humiliating life, was her ultimate beau idéal, the brilliant Edward Astley. Now Elissa keeps bumping into Edward everywhere she goes. Which would normally be wonderful …

… except she’s worried he’s going to figure out that she is the anonymous translator everyone is talking about.

LINKS:   Goodreads   |    Amazon | My Review

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Isn’t that cover gorgeous? And the story is great too! What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!