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:
“Daisy Emmett knew she never should have agreed to help her mortal enemy the moment she saw the KEEP OUT sign.”
Do you recognize the lines?
Here’s a hint:
It’s a new contemporary romance.
Still not sure? Here’s another hint:
It’s written by Charlotte Stein.
The First Lines Friday book is:
While You Were Seething
Title: While You Were Seething
Pages: 320
Publication Date: April 14, 2026
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Synopsis: Daisy Emmett has been enemies with famous romance author Caleb Miller since they were in college together, and time hasn’t lessened their mutual loathing. So when she agrees to manoeuvre him through a PR disaster of his own making, she knows it’s not going to be easy. She just doesn’t realise how not easy until they somehow end up trapped in the same truck, on an endless road trip from one book tour stop to another, bantering and butting heads along the way.
Then, even more people appear to be mistaking her for the woman he dedicates all his books to. The love of his life, his adored beloved—the one who doesn’t actually exist. Now they’re trapped into pretending she does and that Daisy is her, each fake kiss and phoney embrace ratcheting up the tension to the point where enemies suddenly seems a lot closer to lovers than either of them would like.
Or so they’re telling themselves.
But sometimes it’s hard to be sure, when seething turns into something so much more…
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon | Review
Have you read While You Were Seething? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
