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?  If you want to make your own post, feel free to use or edit the banner above, and follow the rules below:

• 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!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

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Hello, reader!

We’ve arrived at another glorious Friday and, even though I work this weekend, I’m pretty ecstatic. This has been a loooooong week, let me tell ya. If I never see another Covid-19 test, it will be too soon 😩

But let’s not focus on the stresses of the lab. It’s time to do this week’s First Lines Friday! I always have a lot of fun trying to guess the books in everyone’s post, though I am notoriously terrible at it. Today, I have a completely different sort of book than the one I featured last week. Let’s see if these first lines will clue you in.

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The Line(s):

“The student union’s coffee shop was like a bad pop song: painfully repetitive and unnaturally upbeat. Milk was steamed, names were chirped, and baristas beamed as if there were any call for such abominably perky behavior.”

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Any guesses?

Ok, so I cheated a little and skipped the prologue and picked the first lines from chapter one. So I suppose I’ll give you some hints.

It’s the second book in a companion novel series

The cover is a bright, cheerful yellow

The main character in this book is related to the main character in the first novel of the series

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The Reveal:

Click the cover to be taken to the Goodreads page

Goodreads Synopsis

“Talia Hibbert returns with another charming romantic comedy about a young woman who agrees to fake date her friend after a video of him “rescuing” her from their office building goes viral…

Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.

When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?

Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his… um, thighs.

Suddenly, the easy lay Dani dreamed of is more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?”

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I am realizing now that I missed the prime opportunity to use the fact that this book is called Take a Hint, Dani Brown in the hints that I gave you. Rookie move, Kerri! Either way, I recently borrowed this book from the library and I’m so excited to give it a go! I had a great time with the first book in this series, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, and this little snippet alone makes me think I’m going to love this one just as much.

Have you read this book? Did those first few lines capture your attention? Let me know in the comments!

And, as always, happy reading!