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:
“It was the wrong time to be living on the streets.”
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
It’s a new release!
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Neal Schusterman.
The First Lines Friday book is:
All Better Now
Title: All Better Now
Author: Neal Schusterman
Page Length: 528
Pub. Date: Feb. 4, 2025
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Synopsis: From New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman comes a young adult thriller about a world where happiness becomes contagious and the teens caught in the conspiracy by the powers that be to bring back discontent.
An unprecedented condition is on the rise. It behaves like a virus, with the first symptom being a fever, but those who contract it experience long-term effects no one has ever seen utter contentment. Soon after infection, people find the stress, depression, greed, and other negative feelings that used to weigh them down are gone.
Almost everyone revels in this mass unburdening. But people in power—who depend on malcontents tuning into their broadcasts, prey on the insecure to sell their products, and convince people they need more, new, faster, better everything—know this new state of being is bad for business. Soon, campaigns start up convincing people that being happy all the time is dangerous. There’s even a vaccine developed to rid people of their inner peace and get them back to normal because, surely, without anger or jealousy as motivators, productivity will grind to a halt and the world will be thrown into chaos.
It’s nearly impossible to determine the truth when everyone with a platform is pushing their own agendas, and two teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in different ways by the virus find themselves enmeshed in the center of a dangerous power play. Can they reveal the truth?
Are you excited to read All Better Now? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
Ooh, I’m really curious about this one. Have you read it yet?