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:
“Red signifies life.
Blossoms. Berries. Blood.”
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
It’s a new dystopia.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Jess Lourey.
The First Lines Friday book is:
The Verdant Cage
The Wall was built to keep them safe. Or so they thought.
For as long as seventeen-year-old apothecary Rose Allgood can remember, the towering stone Wall surrounding Noah’s Valley has protected her people. No one leaves. No one fights. And no one questions why.
But their paradise has been hiding its thorns. When Rose’s mother becomes the Valley’s first murder victim and her twin brother is swiftly condemned, she alone is searching for the real killer. Determined to find the truth, she follows a trail of hidden messages, forbidden knowledge, and whispers of a past no one dares to remember.
The deeper she digs, the more certain Rose becomes that her mother’s death was no accident. That the Wall isn’t just keeping something out.
It’s keeping something in.
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon | Bookshop.org
Have you read The Verdant Cage? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
I just started this last night!