First Lines Friday: August 14, 2026

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:

“I plan to kill Grand Mom with a long range rifle.

My sister plans to kill her with a shark.

Mom plans to kill her by accident.

And Dad plans to use a pillow, since they’re very soft, and it’ll be “just like she’s going to sleep forever.”

Do you recognize the lines?

Here’s a hint:

It’s a new YA thriller.

Still not sure? Here’s another hint:

It’s written by DineshThiru.

The First Lines Friday book is:

My Killer Family Reunion

Nothings brings family together like attempted murder.

There are three things Jayshree Devi can count on happening at her annual family 1) her cousins will forget she exists, 2) her aunts will try to set her up, and 3) her uncles will get into a fight. What she doesn’t expect? An accident that lands her grandmother in a coma, throwing the family—and their matriarch’s sizeable fortune—into chaos.

When Jay discovers Grand Mom’s “accident” might not have been so accidental after all, she’ll have to dig through decades of secrets to find the truth. With the help of her (annoyingly perky) cousins and one of their (annoyingly hot) friends, Jay finds herself knee-deep in a mystery that’s even more tangled than her family tree.

But the closer Jay gets to answers, the closer she gets to finding her place amongst the relatives who once felt so distant. With Grand Mom’s life and fortune hanging in the balance, can Jay save her family and maybe hook up with a hottie while she’s at it?

LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org

What do you think of the first lines? Comment below!