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:
“If the bread hadn’t burned, this would be a very different story. If the cook’s son hadn’t come home late the night before, if the cook hadn’t known he was hanging around that lady playwright, if she hadn’t lain awake fretting for his immortal soul and weeping over the future fates of possible grandchildren, if she hadn’t been so tired and distracted, then the bread would not have burned and the calamities that followed might have belonged to some other house than Casa Ordono, on some other street than Calle de dos Santos.”
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
It’s written by Leigh Bardugo.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s a new release!
The First Lines Friday book is:
The Familiar
Title: The Familiar
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Page Length: 400
Publication Date: April 9, 2024
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Synopsis: In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Have you read The Familiar? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
It is definitely an intriguing beginning.
Yep, got this one!! Always helps when you’ve read/are reading a book featured in the first lines haha.
lol I hope you love it!
I did get this one!
Yay! 🙂
Ooh, what great first lines! I’m keen to read this 🙂