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:
“If you think your love life is a disaster, I’m here to make you feel a whole lot better about yourself. Mine wasn’t just a disaster, but an international one.”
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 Emma Lord.
The First Lines Friday book is:
For the Record
Title: For the Record
Author: Emma Lord
Page Length: 320
Pub. Date: Aug. 12, 2025
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Synopsis: Once the most notorious rivals in the music scene, pop princess Mackenzie Waters and punk rockstar Sam Blaze electrified audiences as their bands clashed on stage. But behind the scenes, their simmering tension grew into something more — until suddenly both bands fell apart, and the idea of Mackenzie and Sam did, too.
Two years later, Sam has traded the rockstar lifestyle for a quiet life raising the son he didn’t know about. Meanwhile, Mackenzie is dealing with a postoperative change in her voice by only singing under a pseudonym. The only way to revive their public careers? A joint comeback album.
With fans over the moon and their futures on the line, Sam and Mackenzie face their biggest challenge yet: giving up the old rivalry and learning to work together. But as old sparks fly and new secrets emerge, they set off a chain reaction neither of them could have anticipated — one that proves that sometimes, the greatest hits are the ones yet to be written.
Have you read For the Record? What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!
Once you said Emma Lord I knew what it was! lol
Lol – It’s a popular one right now.