First Lines Friday 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 all starts when Penelope Ross leans in over the restaurant’s solid wooden table, lifts her index finger, and declares, “Tenth circle of Hell: You find the love of your lofe, but the sex is intensely meh.”
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
It’s a contemporary romance.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Ali Hazelwood.
The First Lines Friday book is:
Deep End
Title: Deep End
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Page Length: 464
Pub. Date: Feb. 4, 2025
Synopsis: A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.
Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water…
Haha, omg these lines! I definitely want to read this one 😂
lol Right!!