First Lines Fridays 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
Lines
It’s hot the second the doors open. The kind of air that leaves you sticky straightaway, sweat trickling along your spine, and you almost can’t wait for the sweet relief of the cold shower awaiting you at the end of the night. The stage is empty; music thumps out of hidden speakers instead, electro Biggie and Blondie covers and sometimes Aaliyah, because of course Aaliyah. A light-copper-skinned girl in hacked shorts and a Bikini Kill tee cuts through the crowd, holding tight to the wrist of another girl with hair bleached whiter than her pale skin. The first girl, natural curly hair blown out to wild proportions, hoists herself onto the stage. A third girl appears from the wings, the lights setting a sheen of purplish-pink on her deepbrown skin, and holds a hand out to the blonde. All three duck back into the wings together, grabbing guitars, picks, drumsticks, courage. Then the music cuts, and the purple-green-red lights flash down, and a person with lime-green lipstick and a buzz cut squeezes past them. “Ready?” they say.
And The Book Is…
I chose this book for this post because I was going to review this book next, and I wanted to see what you guys think about it.
Alex