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:
As soon as I saw you, I knew a grand adventure was about to happen.”
Do you recognize the line?
Here’s a hint:
It’s a new contemporary romance.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Sarah Chamberlain.
The First Lines Friday book is:
Love Walked In
Title: Love Walked In
Author: Sarah Chamberlain
Page Length: 352
Pub. Date: Sept. 2, 2025
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Synopsis: He has a struggling bookshop. She has a knack for bringing bookstores back to life. As soon as she walks into his store, all bets are off…
Mari Cole’s whole life is her dream rescuing and revitalizing indie bookstores. Friendship? Love? No thanks. After a hard childhood, she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone. Besides, books have never let Mari down the way people have.Then she gets the offer of a rescuing Ross & Co. Once the most prestigious independent booksellers in London, the store is a shadow of its former self and needs an expert outsider to turn things around. But the offer turns out to be a double-edged Leo Ross, the store’s new owner, is as cold and hostile as the British winter.
Advertisement
For as long as he can remember, Leo Ross has known his future is becoming the next generation to run Ross and Co. He’s sacrificed almost everything he cares about, but the bookshop is still failing on his watch, and now there’s an obnoxiously cheerful American woman convinced that she’s going to magically make everything better. Leo’s life is difficult and messy enough as it is, and he doesn’t want her help.
When Mari and Leo are forced to work closely together to bring the store back to life, Leo’s icy surface thaws to reveal the passionate man underneath. As the cold winter gives way to the possibility of new beginnings, Mari begins to see that true love could be even better in real life than in the pages of a book. Can they put their pasts aside and learn to let love in?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Review
Have you read Love Walked In? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!!
